Beyond the Bitumen: Rethinking Car Parks as Civic and Social Infrastructure?

Beyond the Bitumen

Making better decisions today for tomorrow

Beyond the Bitumen: Why Car Parks Might Be Our Most Overlooked Civic Spaces

Dr Suzanne Barker with input from Will Fooks

Car parks are among the most widespread yet under-considered elements of urban environments. Across Australian cities, particularly in suburban and regional areas, large areas of land are dedicated to parking. These spaces are typically treated as technical infrastructure, focused on vehicle storage, circulation and compliance with planning standards.

At Eukai we have been challenging this assumption. We are exploring how car parks already function as informal civic spaces, supporting everyday interactions that contribute to community connection, safety and belonging. This article summarises our insights presented at the State of Australasian Cities Conference in 2025.

What if one of the most important public spaces in our cities isn’t a park, plaza, or high street—but a car park?

Across Australian cities, vast areas of land are given over to parking, particularly in suburban and regional contexts where public transport is less available. These spaces are typically treated as purely technical: a matter of supply, standards, and circulation. But this framing misses something important. Car parks are also places where everyday life happens.

They are where people arrive, wait, meet, and move through shared routines.

At the State of Australasian Cities Conference in Brisbane (December 2025), we explored a simple but provocative idea: that these “boring places” already function as a form of social infrastructure.

Think about the school pick-up zone, the supermarket forecourt, or the edge of a sporting ground. These are not designed as civic spaces, yet they host repeated, low-key interactions—conversations between parents, familiar nods between neighbours, small moments of recognition. Over time, these encounters contribute to how people experience belonging, safety, and community.

The issue is not that parking lacks social value - it’s that we rarely plan or design for it.

By starting here, three shifts follow.

First, we need to recognise that parking is not neutral. The standards and codes that shape these environments don’t just manage vehicles - they shape everyday experience, including who feels safe, comfortable, and welcome.

Second, design matters.

Many parking environments actively discourage social use through poor lighting, unclear pedestrian routes, and vehicle-dominated layouts. Relatively modest interventions, better lighting, shade, clear walkways, and edges that support activity, can fundamentally change how these spaces function. Marginal gains are real.

Third, governance needs to catch up. Current debates about parking reform focus heavily on quantity, how much parking to provide or remove. But there is an equally important question about quality: what kinds of environments are we producing in the process?

This opens up a different but practical agenda.

Existing car parks can be audited and retrofitted as part of the civic realm. New developments can treat parking areas and forecourts as “micro-publics,” not just leftover space. And policy reform can begin to embed social and safety outcomes alongside efficiency.

Car dependency will not disappear overnight. For the foreseeable future, parking will continue to occupy a significant share of urban land—particularly in suburban and regional contexts. The opportunity, then, is not just to reduce parking, but to rethink what it does.

Because above the bitumen, there is already a layer of everyday civic life. The challenge is not whether these spaces are planned, but what they are planned for—and whether they can also support safer, more social, and more flexible uses over time.