Streetsblog Mourns the Passing of Donald Shoup

Donald Shoup, the author of the groundbreaking High Cost of Free Parking and UCLA Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA, passed away last Thursday evening, February 6, 2025.

Shoup earned a doctorate in economics, and brought that training to his studies of parking policies. The High Cost of Free Parking demonstrated how urban parking policies, especially low-cost or free parking and minimum parking mandates, were damaging cities economically and culturally. 

High Cost concludes with three solutions to the dilemma, which have been adopted to at least some degree by cities across the country: charging fair market prices for curb parking, returning parking revenue to the neighborhood where it was collected for community investment, and removing off-street parking requirements for new development.

Shoup committed decades to researching flawed fundamental assumptions that governed minimum parking requirements, clear writing to educate a wide audience, and engaging decisionmakers with how his findings should shape policy.

High Cost can be found at most major bookstores and a free searchable manuscript can be found at this link.

Shoup’s writing and research goes beyond High Cost. He published three books written just on parking and he’s written countless articles at other publications. He even has his own author page at Streetsblog, where he published his last article, Here’s a Parking Policy That Works for the People. And of course we’ve quoted or referenced his work literally hundreds of times.

The professor will also be remembered for his sense of humor. The gray bearded, white man with leather patches on his tweed blazer embraced the “Shoup Dogg” nickname given to him by his grad students and would joke that he became niche-famous for his work on parking because nobody else wanted to do it.

In this interview with Melanie Curry, he even joked about the difficulty of bringing about change on the ground, even as most experts agree with his views on parking.

Curry: In a nutshell, how do your recommendations about parking policy differ from that norm?

Shoup: My recommendations are pretty much the opposite of current parking policy in most places! [Laughs.] 

Shoup was active locally as well, helping to plan and organize the Los Angeles Bike Summit (2008) and Los Angeles Street Summit the following year. An avid cyclist, Shoup chose two-wheeled travel as often as possible and could regularly be found at CicLAvia and other  bike events throughout the city.

Shoup is survived by his wife and an army of urban planners he helped train that revere him not just for his body of work, but also his spirit and compassion. The eulogies on Shoupistas on Blue Sky include not just activists and academics, but also mayors, Congressmembers, and television personalities.

Rest in peace, Professor Shoup. Your memory will always be a blessing and your legacy will live for generations.

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