'From spaces to places' - Sacha Oerlemans
Q-Park is an international owner and operator of parking facilities (PFs) with over 750 off-street PFs in seven western European countries. Q-Park has established its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategic Framework for the coming years, based on a double materiality analysis which is the cornerstone of the CSRD. The CSR Strategic Framework includes Q-Park’s purpose, vision, focus areas, qualitative ambitions and listed material topics. Besides offering the obvious, such as off-street parking, which allows cities to have more space for people, Q-Park also installs EV charging points, has LED lighting with motion sensors, constructs bicycle parking solutions, offers pre-booking which reduces search traffic, and facilitates other services which need space. But all this is obvious and relevant strategies are in place to ensure a licence to operate for the longer term.
What Q-Park does not have is a Corporate Citizenship Profile, nor does it have a Corporate Community Investment (CCI) Policy. With such a profile and policy, Q-Park would be better equipped to respond to the increasing social responsibility questions, provide societal value in tenders and connect with local officials to establish positive business impact. Q-Park is limiting its opportunities to interact yet is creating value with stakeholders on urban mobility, urban liveability and infrastructural needs on a local scale.
This paper investigates the value of community engagement through public art in or on Q-Park's car parks. Focussing on the need to include social aspects in its business efforts and on communities’ needs to connect and prosper in a liveable environment.