Printed from smellbook.com/smells/parking-garage. This printout keeps the entry for Parking Garage itself: its description, reference card, Connections, questions, evidence, related smells, record details, states, names and citation. It leaves out your own notes, the map, the lists of paths, routes, stories and fragrance directions, and the lists headed “Also linked to” (other entries that share its place or material) and “Linked from”; they are on the page online. The entries this one links to are still printed under Connections and Related smells.
Categories and types group entries for browsing; they are editorial, not evidence. How smells are grouped.
Also known as Car Park · Parking Structure
A covered urban vehicle environment combining concrete, rubber, fuel traces, dust and moving air.
Setting: urban. An editorial word for the kind of place or occasion the smell belongs to, not a smell word.
A parking garage smells of cold concrete, rubber tyres and dust, mixed with faint traces of fuel and exhaust. EDITORIAL
Links SmellBook records for this entry: where you meet it, related smells and comparisons. EDITORIAL links are chosen by SmellBook editors. Nothing here is a ranking.
QUESTIONS ABOUT PARKING GARAGE
A parking garage smells of cold concrete, rubber tyres and dust, mixed with faint traces of fuel and exhaust. The air feels cool, stale and slightly oily, and moving draughts shift the smell between the entrance and the lower levels. Walking from a stairwell down into the parked rows, the mix often seems heavier and closer.
In SmellBook’s words: concrete, rubbery and industrial.
It is met in underground car parks and multi-storey garages, at shopping centres, stations and offices, and while walking to and from the car at the start and end of a trip.
Typical settings: underground parking, multi-storey garage, vehicle entrance.
SmellBook links it to one place page: see it in Connections.
One VERIFIED scientific claim from one published source is recorded for this entry: Fuel evaporation in an underground garage. This claim says only what its source supports, in the scope shown with it.
The scientific study behind this evidence is chemistry or emission work, not a study of how the smell is perceived.
Parking Garage is descriptive only and not an air-quality, ventilation or safety assessment.
SmellBook records one written comparison with other smells: see it in Connections.
No historical source or heritage record is linked to this entry yet.
Answers marked EDITORIAL are written by SmellBook editors to describe the experience and add no scientific fact. Answers marked VERIFIED point to claims on published sources, checked against each source's own summary where one was available (each claim's page says how); what each claim supports is in its own text and scope.
Scientific evidence · 1 claim
Fuel evaporation in an underground garage
In a large residential underground parking garage in Tianjin, volatile organic compounds averaged 362.7 μg/m³ against 63.2 μg/m³ outdoors and were positively correlated with traffic flow, especially in the daytime; tailpipe exhaust accounted for 43.2% and evaporative emissions of fuel vapour for 33.7% of them, and evaporation from the many parked cars for 69.3% at night.
One garage in China, with sources apportioned by a statistical model; it measures air composition, not odour.
How this was found: Emissions or air measured. What a material, product or place releases into the air was measured, usually without assessing odour. Source: primary study; material-emission work.
Yajun Wu, Yan Liu, Peiji Liu, Luna Sun, Pengfei Song, Jianfei Peng, Ruikang Li, Ning Wei et al.
DOI 10.1016/j.envpol.2023.122022Links chosen by SmellBook editors, not a ranking.
Associations can vary strongly by person, place and culture.
PATHS FROM HERE
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WHERE THIS SMELL APPEARS
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FOR RESEARCHERS AND EDITORS
Identity, revision history, corrections and how to cite Parking Garage.
CULTURAL: This entry's associations depend on context, language, memory or culture; its description and smell words are editorial. It says nothing about research or historical evidence; evidence for this entry is shown separately: VERIFIED.
How this entry is identified and named, for citing it or matching it with other records.
SmellBook SB-0188 — Parking Garagesmellbook:smell:parking-garagehttps://smellbook.com/smells/parking-garageSmellBook. (2026). Parking Garage (revision 5, 2026-10-06). SmellBook Public Atlas. smellbook:smell:parking-garage. https://smellbook.com/smells/parking-garage@misc{smellbook_parking_garage_r5,
author = {{SmellBook}},
title = {Parking Garage},
year = {2026},
note = {SmellBook Public Atlas, revision 5, 2026-10-06, smellbook:smell:parking-garage},
url = {https://smellbook.com/smells/parking-garage}
}TY - ENCYC ID - smellbook-parking-garage-r5 TI - Parking Garage AU - SmellBook T2 - SmellBook Public Atlas PY - 2026 DA - 2026/10/06 ET - revision 5 UR - https://smellbook.com/smells/parking-garage N1 - SB-0188; smellbook:smell:parking-garage; resolver https://smellbook.com/id/smell/parking-garage ER -
The citation names revision 5 of 2026-10-06, so a reader can tell exactly which version was cited. Citing records what was read; it does not grant a licence.
Parking Garage is descriptive only and not an air-quality, ventilation or safety assessment.
Editorial description expanded to answer what it smells like and where you meet it; independently reviewed.
Created 2026-09-22 · Updated 2026-10-06Dataset history In the SmellBook dataset since the first of three dataset releases of 2026-09-30; changed in the first of two dataset releases of 2026-10-05 (descriptors).
No correction notices published for this entry. Corrections policyEVIDENCE MATTERS
SmellBook separates cultural association, community perception, verified evidence, prediction and experimental relationships rather than presenting them as the same thing. Read the evidence guide ↗ See the evidence coverage report ↗