[Massplanners] Inspiring background

[Carolyn Britt]

All,

Below is an inspiring memory of an important contributor to the work we 
do. At the time, he was was on the faculty of the program at the 
University of Michigan I did my planning degree work in, but 
unfortunately I never had a class with him.

This is probably a Friday email, but enjoy it on this cold, dank day.

Carolyn Britt, AICP

1 Shagbark Woods

Ipswich, MA 01938

978-356-9881 land line

978-317-2145 cell


  Donald Shoup had a major impact on cities

The planning academic changed how we view parking across the American 
landscape, launching reforms that have helped municipalities.
ROBERT STEUTEVILLE <https://www.cnu.org/node/538>    FEB. 10, 2025

Donald Shoup died last Thursday at the age of 86, having made a greater 
impact on cities than all but a few urban planners in the last century.

Shoup’s rise to national prominence began 20 years ago with the 
publishing of */The High Cost of Free Parking/, * an unlikely classic if 
there ever was one. The 734-page doorstop-of-a-book tackled a subject 
that most people consider dry and technical—and few urban planners took 
seriously at the time—the ubiquitous parking lots, spaces, and garages 
spread across the American landscape, and the invisible policies 
behind them.

Shoup, a UCLA professor of urban planning, was 66, an age when most 
practitioners and academics are winding down their careers. /The High 
Cost of Free Parking/ made parking interesting and explained how it is 
vitally important. It kicked off an era of parking reform that is 
helping to remake cities and suburbs throughout America.

In 2023, Shoup won the Seaside Prize and was selected by /Planetizen 
<https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2023/07/20/cnuers-rank-among-most-influential-urbanists-past-and-present>/ 
as one of the 10 most influential urban planning thinkers of the last 
century—noted among historical figures like Jane Jacobs, Le Corbusier, 
and Lewis Mumford and prominent present-day urbanists.

In the last two decades, Shoup became a cult figure and hero to young 
reformers—referred to as “Shoupistas.” Some called him “Shoup Dogg,” a 
remarkable sobriquet for a gentlemanly academic working in an obscure 
land-use planning field. Despite the attention, he never seemed to take 
himself too seriously.

“This is a devastating loss,” said CNU cofounder Stefanos Polyzoides, 
whose firm is based in Pasadena, where Shoup conducted early research. 
“The man was a field all by himself.  And his humility and sense of 
humor were inspiring, if not infectious. I will personally miss him.”

Shoup picked one area of focus and stuck with it for nearly half a 
century. He latched on to parking reform in the late 1970s, when every 
city and town in America pursued a policy of providing ample automobile 
parking for every facility, cradle to grave—from hospitals, day-care 
facilities, schools, and churches, to employment offices, senior 
centers, and funeral parlors. Parking must be provided for every 
activity, and he asked, “Why?” and “What are the consequences?”

Parking reform in Pasadena helped to revive the city’s downtown, which 
Shoup described as a “commercial skid row” in the 1970s. Charging a 
market rate for street parking so that spaces were always available and 
dedicating the revenues to public services turned downtown into a 
thriving attraction that draws 30,000 visitors daily, he explained in a 
2017 interview 
<https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/06/05/great-idea-rethinking-parking> 
published in /Public Square/.

Most planners were skeptical of his arguments when /The High Cost of 
Free Parking/ was released. “When the book came out, half the planning 
profession thought I was crazy and the other half thought I was 
daydreaming,” he told /Public Square/. “Now planners are beginning to 
think that the ideas were practical and sensible.”

Parking is one of the three big ideas that created the conventional 
suburbia we know today, he explains—the others were the separation of 
uses and limiting density so that people have to travel long distances 
to get from A to B. In /The High Cost of Free Parking/, he points out 
the often ridiculous nature of parking requirements.

The planning profession, in its eagerness to be comprehensive, has 
identified more than 600 different uses, each with its own parking 
requirement, Philip Langdon wrote in a 2005 review for /New Urban News/. 
He quotes Shoup: “A gas station must provide 1.5 parking spaces per fuel 
nozzle, and a mausoleum must provide parking spaces per maximum number 
of interments in a one-hour period. Why? Nobody knows.”

A large part of Shoup’s appeal is a folksy humor that resonates with 
many audiences, CNU President Mallory Baches wrote following Shoup’s 
Seaside Prize ceremony. “His approach to educating both academics and 
everyday folks about the costs of parking seems to give the impression 
that he’s letting you in on the joke of ridiculousness,” Baches 
explained to CNU members. “It’s led to his loyal fan base, of which many 
of you reading this are surely members just like me.”

In the last 10 years, parking reform has spread to cities and towns 
across America 
<https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2023/03/23/parking-reform-snowballing>, 
helping to revitalize downtowns, promote infill development, and aid 
suburban retrofit. Many researchers have followed in Shoup's footsteps, 
some finding that conventional parking requirements impede the economies 
of cities 
<https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/less-parking-better-centers>. Buffalo, 
New York, got rid of parking requirements with its Green Code in 2017, 
and the city soon began growing in population 
<https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2022/08/16/how-zoning-reform-has-helped-turn-buffalo-around> 
again after six decades of shrinking.

The parking reform movement would not have happened in the same way 
without Shoup, who has seen his life’s work validated. Shoup was a rare 
planning academic who lived to see his ideas widely adopted by 
municipalities and praised by practitioners.
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