Spending what feels like forever cruising around a crowded downtown area looking for parking can be highly frustrating, but there’s an obvious solution: take alternative transportation. Decades of car-centric culture around the world have made it difficult to pry people out of their vehicles and into the seats of buses, trains and bicycles, but what if those modes of transportation were a lot easier to access and enjoy? A new collaboration between Dutch bicycle brand Union and ad agency Natwerk aims to do just that with a fun mobile parking shed for bikes.

One could argue that there’s ample space to park bicycles all over the city of Amsterdam (and most cities, for that matter) while parking spots for cars are harder to come by, therefore the pop-up is taking up valuable space. But that’s part of the point. The project demonstrates how many more people could get around if there were fewer individual vehicles on the road, especially those with a single occupant. In fact, Union argues that there are still too man parking spaces for cars instead of bicycles in a city where cycling is so popular.

Though it hasn’t been approved by the city, the mobile bike parking shed gets away with occupying parking spaces through a loophole; as required by law, it has its own license plate so the operator can pay for parking like everyone else. The parking shed was quite a spectacle while in motion, but once parked along one of the city’s poshest shopping streets, it stirred up some controversy. Dutch news site Fonk Online reports that angry shopkeepers at adjacent businesses worried their car-driving customers would be put out, while passersby complained that “the motorist is already being bullied too much.”

Frank de Ruwe, the creative network of Natwerk, shrugs off these responses. “Cycling is simply better for the world than driving. Everyone agrees.”

Since cars are still so convenient, it might take more than a little “bullying” to prompt people to consider alternatives. While bicycling is not for everyone, and some people still need to drive due to cargo or disabilities, cities would be a lot more pleasant (and emit a lot fewer greenhouse gases) if they contained fewer cars. While occupying more parking spaces for other uses would undoubtedly upset a lot of drivers, it could also provide a bit of a helpful push toward a new way of thinking about urban transit.

New Zealand architect Jonathan Smith worked with a cabinetmaker to carefully deconstruct part of this 1890s home in Auckland, then assembled a set of automatic doors as well as a moving fence to conceal a brand new garage space, all expertly retrofit into the historic structure.

The result is a high-level work of camouflage, preserving the exterior look and feel of the house while creating a James Bond-worthy disguise for the reappropriated space. Inside, a lift hoists one car up to make room for a second as well.

“We wanted to retain the character from the street so we cut through the joinery units to create two doors and then lined up the boards so you wouldn’t know,” explains the designer, who is also founder of Matter Architects.

Inside, a similar attention to historical details coupled with Modern refinements can also be found, with preserved brick surfaces complimenting new steel and glass elements. The garage, while central to the redesign, is just one of the tricks this house is now home to.

Out back, fresh treatments and extensions create a modern garden landscape, complete with outdoor fireplace as well as linear, structured wood and concrete space-shaping elements.

If you have ever opened a side door to see the lines of a parking space, or asked a passenger to get out and guide you in, you may be wondering where this simple solution has been for all your years of urban driving.

In some cases, like parallel street parking, it would be hard to implement. But in open lots or interior garages — anywhere with a wall, fence, guardrail or space for posts — it is just too obvious and easy not to do, yet too few places realize the opportunity.

In areas where it snows, these lines do a lot more than just help guide people into their final parking position — buried under fresh powder, they can represent the only way to keep a lot from devolving into a state of anarchy.

The Netherlands, where bikes outnumber citizens, is well known for its cycle-centric transportation infrastructure. In Utrecht, over 100,000 cyclists ride through the city every day, connecting between home, school, work and public transportation. Now open, this newly-built bicycle parking lot can already house 6,000 rides at a time, but is aiming to more than double that capacity by the end of the year.

It actually looks a lot like a conventional parking lot, filled with ramps and arrows pointing cyclists through the structure, crisscrossed with walking paths for people traveling to and from their personal vehicle. Dense stacking allows for layered storage across the multiple levels of the structure.

Eventually, the parking structure will store a remarkable 33,000 bicycles by 2020, which, to most people, might sound like a lot of bikes. But the design, patterned after Tokyo’s amazing underground bike parking station, has people worried — not because it could be overbuilt, but because the capacity might not match the demand.

As popular as cycling already is in the region, the number of people on bikes continues to grow and the Netherlands has long had storage space issues related to this growth. One cycling organization quoted John Lennon to make the point: “life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” They say politicians are still being too slow to make decisions and implement plans to increase bike-supporting infrastructure. Still, too many riders and fewer seems like a good problem for a city to have.

As driverless vehicles hit the streets and shared car usage grows, forward-thinking architects, developers and urban planners are working on adaptable designs to future-proof parking garage structures and give them second lives.

Big firms like Gensler see the writing on the wall, predicting car usage will peak by the end of the decade and ride-sharing may dominate by 2025. The effect of this on cities and real estate will be massive, freeing up home garages, street parking and dedicated parking structures — nation-wide there are over 500,000 parking spots and spaces inside buildings and outdoors covering an estimated 3,500+ square miles.

Gensler’s The Mod concept plays to new possibilities in light of their predictions, featuring garage floor heights that will work for new uses. Its modular sections can be easily moved or removed to let in light and facilitate circulation. Built-in utility hookups also help make conversion easier. The firm has also designed a building in Ohio with three parking levels made to be changed into offices over time with easily-added facades and details similar to ones found on other floors (below).

Another such project — a 1,000-car garage for building residents in the Arts District of Los Angeles by Avalon Bay — is to be completed in four years, a long time in this age of fast-evolving technology. Accordingly, their plans include tricks to make converting this area back to other residential uses easy and efficient. This includes flat floors (rather than inclined ones found in many garages) so they can be turned effectively into usable spaces, like shops or community areas.

Converting garages will be a huge project of the coming decades, but so will rethinking the way new architecture is designed in the age of autonomous vehicles. Without people at the wheel, cars can park themselves in smaller spaces. Loading/unloading zones will be reduced and the way people enter buildings (from the street rather than a garage) could change dramatically as well.

Then, of course, there are streets — with less street-side parking, space is opened up for things like parklets, walking and biking paths (not to mention all of the changes to how roads will work). Accordingly, many designers, developers and planners are wisely anticipating these changes — still, their ultimate effect on the built environment remains to be seen as the future continues to take shape.