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<p>All,</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This is probably a Friday email, but enjoy it on this cold, dank
day.</p>
<address>Carolyn Britt, AICP</address>
<address>1 Shagbark Woods</address>
<address>Ipswich, MA 01938</address>
<address>978-356-9881 land line</address>
<address>978-317-2145 cell<br>
</address>
<h1>Donald Shoup had a major impact on cities</h1>
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<div class="field-item even">The planning academic changed how
we view parking across the American landscape, launching
reforms that have helped municipalities.</div>
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<div class="submitted-text"><a href="https://www.cnu.org/node/538">ROBERT
STEUTEVILLE</a> FEB. 10, 2025</div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>Shoup’s rise to national prominence began 20 years ago
with the publishing of <b><em>The High Cost of Free
Parking</em>,
</b> 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. </p>
<p>Shoup, a UCLA professor of urban planning, was 66, an
age when most practitioners and academics are winding
down their careers. <em>The High Cost of Free Parking</em>
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.</p>
<p>In 2023, Shoup won the Seaside Prize and was selected
by <em><a
href="https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2023/07/20/cnuers-rank-among-most-influential-urbanists-past-and-present"
target="_blank">Planetizen</a></em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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?”</p>
<p>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
href="https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/06/05/great-idea-rethinking-parking"
target="_blank">a 2017 interview</a> published in <em>Public
Square</em>. </p>
<p>Most planners were skeptical of his arguments when <em>The
High Cost of Free Parking</em> 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 <em>Public Square</em>. “Now planners are
beginning to think that the ideas were practical and
sensible.”</p>
<p>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 <em>The High Cost of Free Parking</em>, he
points out the often ridiculous nature of parking
requirements. </p>
<p>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 <em>New Urban News</em>.
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.” </p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>In the last 10 years, parking reform has <a
href="https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2023/03/23/parking-reform-snowballing">spread
to cities and towns across America</a>, 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 <a
href="https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/less-parking-better-centers"
target="_blank">impede the economies of cities</a>.
Buffalo, New York, got rid of parking requirements with
its Green Code in 2017, and the city <a
href="https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2022/08/16/how-zoning-reform-has-helped-turn-buffalo-around"
target="_blank">soon began growing in population</a>
again after six decades of shrinking. </p>
<p>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.</p>
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