Parkyria AI

Two of the Agenda 2030 goals are "Ensuring affordable housing" and "Developing housing in public transport accessible areas." However, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving these goals is parking requirements.

Sweden has five times more parking spaces than cars and more than twice as many parking spaces as people. Yet, new parking facilities continue to be built in nearly every real estate project. Parking provision is mandated by Sweden’s Planning and Building Act (PBL), but constructing parking spaces—particularly in dense urban areas—is extremely costly. A single underground parking spot can cost up to 1 million SEK, excluding land and maintenance costs. At the same time, cheap and convenient parking is one of the primary reasons people choose cars over walking, cycling, or public transport.

An Inefficient and Outdated System

Urbanivation specializes in early-stage urban and real estate development, where mobility and parking consistently emerge as major bottlenecks. The rigid requirement for parking spaces significantly increases development costs and CO₂ emissions, making it difficult for developers to create economically and environmentally sustainable projects. For municipalities, there is a clear conflict between PBL’s legal obligations and Agenda 2030’s sustainability goals. Subsidized parking incentivizes car ownership at the expense of sustainable mobility alternatives. Additionally, a single underground parking space can contribute up to 10 tons of CO₂ emissions during construction.

While rapid advancements in data accessibility, AI, and digitalization are transforming many sectors, municipal and private parking planning processes remain largely analog, fragmented, costly, and inefficient. Today, we have access to traffic flow data, geospatial data, occupancy data, and vehicle ownership statistics, yet this information is not utilized effectively in planning. Most decision-making processes parking planning are analog, fragmented, costly, and inefficient. The real estate and construction industry accounts for 40% of global energy use and CO₂ emissions, highlighting the urgent need for digital tools to optimize resource utilization and improve sustainability.

The Solution: Parkyria AI

Together with municipalities and real estate developers, Urbanivation is developing Parkyria AI—a digital platform designed to optimize parking and mobility planning.

Key objectives:

• Bridge sustainability goals with policy development through AI-driven analysis, empowering municipalities to make informed, data-driven decisions.
• Reduce unnecessary parking construction by visualizing its environmental and economic impacts already in the planning phase.
• Enable shared use of existing parking infrastructure, maximizing utilization before new spaces are built.

Three core innovation goals:

1. Leverage AI and data-driven methodologies to optimize resource efficiency in parking and mobility.
2. Integrate climate impact into planning and policy development, ensuring sustainable and evidence based decision-making.
3. Develop a scalable model for municipalities and real estate developers across Sweden and abroad.

Open Data as an Enabler

The EU Open Data Directive (2019/1024) promotes the reuse of public information and stimulates innovation by making data more accessible. Studies suggest that Sweden’s National Land Survey (Lantmäteriet) open data could generate between 10 and 21 billion SEK in societal benefits annually. Parkyria AI is a prime example of how open data can unlock societal value and innovation.

Starting 2025, Lantmäteriet will make key geospatial datasets freely available, marking a major shift towards transparency and data-driven urban planning. This initiative will enable Parkyria AI to scale across municipalities, establishing standardized data models that can be applied in multiple European cities.

Why Now? A Paradigm Shift in Municipal Mobility Planning

Many municipalities are currently undergoing a paradigm shift, where traditional parking policies are being questioned and revised. Cities are actively seeking

• Modernized workflows
• Improved methods for calculating parking demand
• New digital tools to enhance efficiency and sustainability in mobility planning

Lund and Örebro are leading municipalities in this transition and will serve as pilot cities for Parkyria AI. The timing is ideal, as the project meets an urgent need while supporting long-term goals in urban sustainability, digitalization, and data-driven policymaking.