Parisians have been turning creative parking into an art form lately, gambling that the winner this year will once again annul fines worth millions of dollars.
Their strategy, says Ingels, is to "transform the sea of parking into a natural landscape, where you'll find an abundance of green both outside and inside".
"They would turn it into more luxury housing," Ms. James said, suggesting that it was naïve to think developers would volunteer to turn their extra parking into subsidized housing or a community space.
When the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in Austin, Tex., closed in 1999, the California-based Catellus was hired to turn 700 acres of runway, terminal and parking into a similar mixed-use community called Mueller.
But with a presidential election in the spring, many Parisians are turning creative parking into an art form: a political tradition dictates that the new president's first decree is an amnesty on parking tickets.
The deal wraps services like daily breakfast, Internet access, local phone calls and overnight parking into nightly rates at city hotels and offers five nights for the price of three or seven nights for the price of four.
