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Comment by white-flame | Hacker News Reader

Also massive parking structures. It's the interface between car-places and walking-places, necessary for the otherwise car-centric norm outside.

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You need some parking yes, although it doesn't have to be right outside the pedestrian zone (and in fact that would almost certainly be a terrible idea for a variety of reasons).

In Munich, for example, the city center is largely car-free as far as I can tell, but parking nearby is still limited and expensive. That's okay, because transit is good enough to where you can park more on the outskirts of the city and take the S-Bahn in.

I haven't really seen many "massive parking structures" here that match your description, but then again I don't have a car so I'm not really looking for them.

But really in Munich, even if you're living in a suburb of Munich surrounded by farmland, they're compact enough to where almost everybody can walk or bike to the train station that goes to the city center. Check out Groebenzell if you don't believe me: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gr%C3%B6benzell/data=!4m2!...

Virtually no Fußgängerzone in Germany has that, but it might be worth consideration for lack of better alternatives like public transport.

A lot of German cities has large parking garages acrosss the city centers. So it is quite possible to drive to those garages by car and then continue by foot. Cologne for example had an electronic system in place even 30 years ago, which would account all free parking spots in the big garages. Those numbers would be relayed to traffic signs at the big roads leading into the city. So while approaching the inner city you could see the total amount of free parking spaces and as you get closer you would get signs pointing out this number for the individual garages. So it was quite easy to directly find a parking slot as long as there was a reasonable amount of slot left.

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