
It’s easy to assume Sweden’s shift to fully digital parking was mainly a technology change. In reality, the decisive factors were many more.
This session breaks down the governance models, procurement choices, trust-building measures, and user adoption mechanisms that enabled cities to remove parking meters and cash payments.
Drawing on lessons from Sweden—and contrasting them with early experiences from Germany and Austria—we explore what municipalities should consider when modernizing parking systems: where standardization helps, where local control matters, and which assumptions tend to fail in practice.
