Building Down

When we're driven by temptation, it might be best to park those enticements deep in the Word of God.

Car-dominated territory.

It's unfit for humans, some say. In fact, a study has shown that when any more than 9 percent of a place is devoted to parking, we feel we don't belong there any more. We get a rush of automotive anxiety. Any parking area with more than six cars is "car-dominated territory," and such a landscape makes humans very uncomfortable.

Problem is, we Americans own 200 million automobiles - almost half of the world's 520 million cars. All those cars need to be parked somewhere when not in use.

One option is surface-level lots, but these consume land and space and contribute to rising temperatures in the summer in densely populated cities. Parking garages are another possibility. But they consume massive amounts of space.

One company is making robotic parking garages to address the parking crunch. About 5,000 are already operating in Europe and Asia. You drive your car inside the garage entrance, step out and take a ticket. A computerized system of pallets and elevators...