Places that are used by shopping center visitors during the day can be used by Lisbon residents at night.

It is at night that Lisbon's residents are most in demand for on-street parking, creating enormous pressure in many areas where surface supply is limited (because public space is also limited) and housing has been built without garages. In many cases, the dedicated underground or high-rise car parks operated by EMEL or private companies are also not enough to meet demand. However, there are a number of parks in Lisbon that are unused during the night and which can help solve this problem. We are talking, for example, about shopping center parking lots.
Making these places available to the population at night periods, when shopping centers are closed and do not need them, is one of the objectives of a collaboration protocol signed last week between the European Commission and the European Parliament. EMEL and the Portuguese Association of Shopping Centers (APCC). This agreement seeks to "the identification and dissemination by APCC to its associates with shopping centers that have parking infrastructures in the city of Lisbon, with parking spaces that can be used by EMEL, to extend the offer of night parking for residents"according to a press release, released by the APCC.
The APCC represents the largest shopping centers in the city of Lisbon, such as the Colombo, o Vasco da Gama, o Amoreirasthe Chiado Warehouses or the Alvalade Shopping Centerand counts among its associates Sonae, owner of the Mainlandand the Pingo Doce. "Under this protocol, the APCC undertakes to inform and disseminate to its members, the the possibility of assigning parking spaces in the city of Lisbon to EMEL, under conditions to be agreed directly between members wishing to join the program and EMEL itself.“, the association said, adding that "the APCC and EMEL admit the possibility of, by mutual agreement, extending the scope of the protocol to other parking lots associated with the purposes of the APCC" - i.e. parks that are not directly owned by shopping centers but serve these structures.

The mixed use of spaces is pointed out by urban planners and other city experts as advantageous for the optimization of urban resources, allowing the same infrastructure to have different uses throughout the day. In this way, the city can avoid building more, mono-functional infrastructure, and can use existing infrastructure that is unused at certain times. Parking lots are often expensive to build. For example, a new silo in the parish of Campo de Ourique, with 89 spaces, will cost EMEL €2.56 million - an investment of around €28,800 per space. Pedro Costa, president of the Campo de Ourique parish council, is a fan of this idea. mixed uses and even told LPP in a conversation in February that a solution to the lack of parking in the Santa Isabel neighborhood, for example, could go through Amoreiras. "Unlike the rest of the Campo de Ourique neighborhood, here in Santa Isabel there are zero possible solutions for large parking, either surface or silo. There is no land for it. We really have a parking shortage problem"He explained why he could not do without car parking spaces in favor of more pedestrian space. For Pedro Costa, the Amoreiras shopping center, which neighbors the neighborhood, could do without places to solve the parish's shortcomings.
This idea of using private parking lots, at certain times, for public parking is not new in Lisbon, having been suggested by the Livre party when presenting its proposal for the requalification of Almirante Reis. The party represented in Lisbon by councillor Rui Tavares suggestedIn 2022, a survey of all the parking supply of hotels, commercial areas and office buildings in that axis will be carried out so that these infrastructures can be used, when they are not being used by their owners, for parking by residents of the area.

The new protocol between APCC and EMEL was signed for a period of three years. twelve monthsand shall be renewed automatically and successively for equal periods of time. If it goes well, the measure could release pressure on some city streets, which could lead Lisbon to consider other uses for the public space on the surface or, at least, to move forward with more confidence with already planned requalification projects. The issue of parking is omnipresent in discussions about the construction of new cycle paths or the extension of pedestrian areas, forcing political compromises. Just recently, in the parish of Avenidas Novas, the Largo de São Sebastião requalification project has been alteredThis is in a parish where only 32% of the approximately 23.2 thousand residents have a car, according to data from the 2021 Census and EMEL on the issuance of badges.
The Portuguese Association of Shopping Centers (APCC) is a national association that brings together companies that invest in, develop and manage shopping centers, as well as retail trade companies and service providers to the sector. The APCC currently has 90 shopping complexes, comprising around 8,000 stores. For its part, EMEL is Lisbon's Municipal Mobility and Parking Company, which manages, in addition to surface parking, several dedicated parking lots throughout the city, the LEVE electric vehicle charging network, the GIRA public shared bicycle system and the BiciParks secure bicycle parking ecosystem.