Share

The discussion about parking should shift from the question of how many parking spaces we need to build to how we can make parking spaces multifunctional, writes Claire van Staaij, Real Estate Sector Expert at ABN AMRO, in her latest column for VJ.

The Netherlands wants to build. A great deal. Hundreds of thousands of new homes need to be built in the coming years, both within cities and on the outskirts of towns and villages. Yet amid architects’ drawings, sustainability ambitions and nitrogen-emissions discussions, one question keeps resurfacing: where will we put all the cars?

It may sound old-fashioned, but the figures tell a clear story. On 1 January 2025, the Netherlands had more than 9.2 million passenger cars—almost 805,000 more than six years earlier. At the same time, the population is growing, the number of households is increasing and many Dutch people, particularly outside the major cities, remain dependent on cars for work, healthcare and leisure. The parking challenge will not disappear simply by ignoring it.

If we assume a minimum of one parking space per car, the Netherlands already needs more than 9 million parking spaces today. In reality, the total is considerably higher, because cars are parked in different locations throughout the day: at home, at work, at shops, at stations, at sports facilities and at leisure destinations.

Estimates suggest that there are more than 10 million parking spaces, and possibly considerably more. At the same time, the Netherlands faces the challenge of building approximately 900,000 to 1 million additional homes in the coming years. Depending on the location, the applicable parking standard and the extent to which shared mobility is used, this will require hundreds of thousands of additional parking spaces.

That is an uncomfortable conclusion, because even if future residents own fewer cars on average than people do today, there will still be a substantial need for parking. For an average new-build neighbourhood, local authorities often use CROW figures to apply parking standards of approximately 0.7 to 1.8 parking spaces per home.

Parking therefore remains a crucial precondition for housing development.

Peaks and troughs

Even so, the discussion too often focuses on numbers and not enough on utilisation. The challenge is therefore not only the number of parking spaces, but above all whether they are available at the right time and in the right place.

A parking space at an office is usually empty in the evening. Parking spaces in residential areas, by contrast, are used most intensively during the evening and at night. Shopping-centre car parks are busiest at weekends, while on many working days they are only partially occupied.

And this may well be the greatest opportunity of all: not to create more parking spaces, but to use existing capacity more intelligently.

Shared use as the new standard

Why should different functions each require their own car park if the same spaces can be used by different people at different times?

A parking facility could be available during the day for employees of nearby offices, in the evening for residents and at weekends for visitors to shops and local amenities. Local authorities are increasingly using occupancy rates and parking-balance assessments to make this shared use visible.

As a result, the total parking requirement can be significantly lower than if each function reserves parking space exclusively for its own use. This delivers more than just space savings. It also reduces construction costs, limits the amount of paved surface and creates more room for green areas, water storage and additional homes.

Energy hub

But perhaps we should go one step further. Why should we view parking spaces solely as facilities for cars?

The parking hub of the future could develop into a multifunctional centre for the entire neighbourhood. Think of a central location combining resident parking, car-sharing schemes, parcel lockers, charging facilities, cycle facilities, solar panels and community batteries.

At that point, a traditional parking facility changes from a cost item into an economically and socially valuable part of the neighbourhood.

Traditional multi-storey car parks are often difficult to make financially viable. Construction costs are high, while revenues are limited to parking charges. A combined mobility and energy hub creates a broader revenue model.

In addition to parking income, revenue can be generated from charging infrastructure, energy storage, solar power and flexibility services for the electricity grid. This is not merely a theoretical vision of the future. The Netherlands now has more than one million plug-in vehicles. Taken together, these vehicles represent enormous battery capacity which, if used intelligently, could help reduce grid congestion and make better use of locally generated energy.

In this way, the same square metre can be used several times at once—for parking, charging, energy storage and mobility.

Multifunctional use

The discussion should therefore shift from the question of how many parking spaces we need to build to how we can make parking spaces multifunctional.

Space in the Netherlands remains scarce. Every square metre reserved exclusively for stationary cars cannot be used for homes, green space, play areas or climate adaptation. At the same time, it would be naïve to assume that cars will disappear from our streets in the short term. With more than 9.2 million passenger cars, parking will remain a basic public necessity for the foreseeable future.

The housing challenge therefore requires not less realism, but more creativity. New homes without a parking solution lead to frustration among residents. Traditional parking solutions result in high costs and inefficient use of space.

The future therefore lies not in more tarmac, but in smart hubs where parking, charging, energy storage, shared mobility and neighbourhood facilities come together.

Anyone who starts to view a parking space as an energy plant, mobility facility and neighbourhood amenity may discover that parking is perhaps the most underestimated opportunity within the Dutch housing challenge.

Parking would then no longer be the final detail of an area development, but one of its foundations.

Note: this is a translation from the original article published by the Vastgoed Journaal on 22 September 2026, written by Claire van Staaij who is sector expert in real estate at ABN Amro.