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Donald Shoup, the pope of parking studies, a.k.a. Shoup Dogg, died last week on February 6 at age 86. News of Shoups passing was confirmed by War on Cars, a podcast about cars and cities, and the formers detrimental impacts on the latter. Streetsblog also mourned Shoups death. A set of remembrances for Shoup were listed on Parking Reform Network, an organization Shoup cofounded which educates the public about the impact of parking policy on climate change, equity, housing, and traffic.Shoup was Distinguished Research Professor at UCLAs Department of Urban Planning. He was at the vanguard of whats called today the war on cars. Shoup was on the side against cars which, in the United States, is like David going up against Goliath. For decades, the auto industry has lobbied hard against the types of proposals Shoup fought for but, today, we are just now starting to reap the fruits of his activism, such as the gradual removal of Minimum Parking Requirements, which opens up more land for housing and walking.Podcast hostsfrom War on Cars remember Shoup as a towering figure in the world of urban planning and as an influential, brilliant, and witty scholar. Shoup has such a cult following, those who follow his teachings are jovially known in the planning community as Shoupistas. A Praxis-Oriented GeorgistToday, the parking meter is a ubiquitous feature in cities around the United States. We dont even think about them, do we? Unless of course we see a parking monitor!Indeed, the parking meter has become as commonplace on our Main Streets as benches and trees. But it didnt always used to be that way, especially in California, a state famous for the tight grip the auto industry has on planning and policy. (Think: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which dramatized the very real General Motors street car conspiracy, where the auto giant sabotaged trolley service to force public transit riders into cars.)Although the first parking meters started popping up in New York in the 1930s, many dont remember the hard fought battle it took to plant those things in the ground in California, generating copious amounts of capital for urban services, a movement that Donald Shoup helmed with vigor and urgency. Shoup was born in 1938 in Long Beach, California. His father was in the U.S. Navy, so they moved around a lot, relocating from California to Hawaii, and then New Haven, and then Virginia. Shoup lived in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1950s, then at the precipice of urban renewal a la Ed Logue, a fraught moment later captured in Lizabeth Cohens Saving Americas Cities.Witnessing entire communities get torn down in New Haven for the sake of highways undoubtedly played an important role in Shoups later activism. He earned a B.E. in electrical engineering at Yale, and then, in 1968, a PhD in economics from Yale.After Yale, Shoup took a faculty position at UCLAs Institute for Government and Public Affairs, and then, in the 1970s, spent a brief amount of time at University of Michigan. By 1974 he was back at UCLA.Later, Shoup taught at University of Hawaii, University of Cambridge, University of Buffalo, and Beijing Transportation Research Center. Shoup combined his knack for city planning with his economics prowess. Shoup, a self-described Georgist, is remembered for changing the way cities enact tolls on motorists, unlocking swaths of cash for city services. Georgisman ideology tethered to 19th-century American, journalist-turned-economist-turned politician Henry Georgeproffered how land acquisitions could finance public services.Today, Georgism is referred to as Geoism, a strange brew of Marxism and humanist deism. Geoism says that all land should be held by the commons, but all value individuals generate should be kept to themselves. I was very interested in using land to finance public services, Shoup told an interviewed in 2005, in describing his affinity for Geoism.That year, Shoup published The High Cost of Free Parkingwhich railed against parking subsidies. This book advocated for three things: Shoup said cities should (1) charge fair market prices for curb parking, (2) spend the meter revenue to improve public services in the metered areas, and (3) remove off-street parking requirements. I teach them how to find itShoups research on Land Tax Theory in Los Angeles was codified in 1992 with the parking-cash out law, which required employers to offer a cash benefit as an alternative to free parking, an attempt at bolstering car pooling in one of the worlds most congested cities. That same approach was later adopted by the Clinton Administrations Climate Change Action Plan.The city of Pasadena had no parking meters until 1993, when land use codes backed by Shoups research got them planted. Shoup spent the duration of his career UCLAs Department of Urban Planning. He took pride in the realpolitik approach to thinking big. While other professors teach [students] how to spend public money like drunken sailors, I teach them how to find it, he said.In 2015, Shoup was given a National Planning Excellence Award by the APA. That decade, he spent much time studying the implementation of High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes in San Diego, something that was later incorporated in Massachusetts.He continued writing and researching on parkings and cars up until his last days: Shoups last article was for Planetizen, dated December 24, titled The City of Broken Sidewalks.Streetsblog encouraged folks to donate to the Donald and Pat Shoup Endowed Fellowship in Urban Planning, which gives scholarships to planning students.
