There are about 500 million parking spaces in America for our 326 million citizens. Parking infrastructure occupies over 3.5 million square miles, an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. And yet, despite our sea of parking garages and lots, visions of a car-less future are gaining momentum. This may be inconceivable for adults who have spent a sizable chunk of their lives behind the wheel, searching for that perfect spot. But if car ownership does indeed drop, parking structures would be cast into the same graveyard as fax machines and video cassettes–or would they?

As an architect who has studied and participated in 15 years’ worth of urban development projects at Arcturis, my hunch is that our cultural shift to ride sharing, autonomous vehicles, and alternative transportation will result in a permanent paradigm shift in urban planning.

Businesses need to park thousands of cars in 2018, but if they’re planning to build new office buildings that last 50 years into a potentially car-less future, the advantage lies in building “future-proof” parking structures which can be repurposed when the time comes.

But what exactly does that entail?

As parking demands decrease, future-proof parking structures would be constructed in a way that each floor could be converted into offices, recreational areas, or even a forest of tiny houses. Specifically, the most important design strategies for such structures are flat plates and adequate space between floors. Adaptive reuse requires a level base rather than the steep slopes that many garages have, so designing flat floors on every level is critical.

In terms of converting a garage into a residential structure, like an apartment complex, there are key design elements which must be integrated from day one to support adaptive reuse. This includes adequate floor-to-floor height for living space and the associated mechanical and/or electrical infrastructure. And in the event that a city would need more parking in the short term, those high ceilings could be converted into a double-stacked parking floor.

The impact of a car-less future may be negligible in the suburbs, but there are strong implications for dense urban areas where land is at a premium. This leads to the big question: how deep could these projects dig into the pockets of taxpayers?