Shoup’s Solution to Parking Congestion in Manhattan

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Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, wrote a commentary for Bloomberg CityLab about how to reduce the overwhelming amount of congestion in Manhattan. A pay-to-park model that changes price depending on demand — which many motorists might find undesirable at first — would ensure that most of the curb space is well used while also leaving room for a few vacant spots, Shoup explained. “Revenue generated by the meters can be used to pay for public services, such as repairing sidewalks, planting street trees or providing other improvements,” he said. “Few will pay for curb parking, but all will benefit from public services.” The meter revenues could also be used to pay for transit passes for workers, allowing commuters who use buses to benefit as well. Shoup calculated that employing this model would allow the Upper West Side to raise $237 million every year.

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After Years of Study, Parking Reform Gaining Ground

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A Wall Street Journal piece on the growing number of U.S. cities rethinking the amount of space set aside for parking cited several UCLA Luskin experts. The article highlighted research by Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning, that found that a 1999 ordinance exempting builders from adding new parking spots in downtown Los Angeles allowed them to add more residential units at a lower cost. Another study by Gregory Pierce, now co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, and C.J. Gabbe, currently a visiting scholar at the center, found that costs associated with parking mandates are often passed on to consumers through higher rents or retail prices, even as many of the spots go unused. Donald Shoup, the urban planning scholar who pioneered the field of parking research, summed up the efforts to reform parking policies: “The Dutch have reclaimed land from the sea, and I think we can reclaim land from parking.”

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Seaside Prize Recognizes Shoup’s Pioneering Work on Parking Reform

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Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, received the 2023 Seaside Prize, which honors those who have significantly influenced how towns and cities are built and rebuilt to promote walkability, affordability, diversity, beauty and sustainability. The nonprofit Seaside Institute cited Shoup’s decades of radical rethinking regarding parking policy: “In his groundbreaking 2005 book ‘The High Cost of Free Parking’ and his work since then, Shoup changed the way cities view the relationship between parking and the built environment, traffic congestion, energy consumption and local economic development.” The Congress for the New Urbanism recently republished its original review of the book, which it credited with sparking a recent surge of parking reforms across the country. Shoup accepted his award at a symposium in Seaside, Florida, a community designed around the principles of New Urbanism. When he launched into the study of parking decades ago, the topic was “the lowest rung on the status ladder,” he said, but times have changed. “Attitudes toward planning for parking are beginning to shift from thoughtless acceptance to thoughtful criticism, and many planners now agree that parking reforms are necessary. Parking is far too important not to study.” The symposium featured other members of the UCLA Luskin community including doctoral student M. Nolan Gray, author of “Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It,” and alumnus William Fulton, an urban planning consultant, author and former government official who studied under Shoup in the 1980s and helped present the Seaside Prize.

Watch the Seaside Prize award ceremony

 

After Decades of Research and Advocacy, Parking Reform Is Finally a Hot Topic

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Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, is highlighted in the New York Times and Public Square, a journal of the Congress for New Urbanism, for his impact on parking policies nationwide. Decades of auto-centric planning in the United States have made it difficult to achieve walkable cities, but more and more local and state governments are overhauling their parking regulations. They include cities such as Pasadena and San Jose, which have joined the parking reform train to encourage walkable and bikeable spaces. The humble parking spot is suddenly a hot topic, the New York Times writes, even though Shoup has been promoting these reforms since the 1970s. His 2005 book “The High Cost of Free Parking” had an impact on the entire country and is now considered a classic in planning literature. “Shoup’s influence is a credit to persistence and focus in academic research,” Public Square noted.

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Read the Public Square article

 

Shoup Explains the Hidden High Cost of Free Parking

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Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, appeared on the podcast The War on Cars to discuss issues that arise as a result of providing free parking. Author of the book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Shoup explained that cars are parked 95% of the time so a major concern becomes finding places to put these cars. Prioritizing cars has detrimental effects on housing costs, congestion and climate change, he argues. One of the policy solutions Shoup proposes is having more parking meters on the street and using revenues to improve the neighborhood. “All the meter money has to go for services on the metered block so that people and businesses on that block see that if there are meters, they get clean sidewalks, they get healthy street trees,” he said. This type of change can garner political support because residents will see a direct benefit in their communities, he said. 

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On the Clear, Practical and Revolutionary Work of Don Shoup

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Donald Shoup’s travels down paths that other academics overlooked have profoundly changed the way we understand cities, and inspired a viable movement to improve them. That’s the message of an essay published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research that offers a personal glimpse into the life and scholarship of Shoup, the distinguished professor whose research has shed light on the consequences of misguided parking policies. The essay is written by Michael Manville, his colleague on the UCLA Luskin Urban Planning faculty, who describes Shoup as the unique academic who offers practical, specific solutions to policy puzzles. His work has led to a “monumental act of reform” in California, a new law abolishing parking requirements within half a mile of transit. “What truly sets Don apart is his relentless pursuit of clarity,” Manville writes. “Don has shown that when we give people knowledge, they will use it, and the world will, in small steps, get better.” 

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Celebrating an End to a ‘Slow-Moving Disaster’

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to the Los Angeles Times about California’s new law barring local governments from mandating parking spaces as part of most development near transit stops. “This is one of the biggest land-use reforms in the country,” Manville said after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2097 into law. “Parking requirements have been an absolutely slow-moving disaster,” Manville said. “We are turning the ship around.” News outlets including StreetsBlog, Bloomberg CityLab and Mother Jones credited research by Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, with laying the groundwork for AB 2097. Shoup’s decades of scholarship pointed out the faulty and arbitrary reasoning behind parking requirements, whose unintended consequences have included raising the cost of of housing and commercial development, creating incentives to drive instead of using transit, and increasing emissions.

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Read the StreetsBlog article

 

Shoup, Manville on Prospects of Statewide Parking Reform

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A Slate article on California legislation to prohibit minimum parking requirements in areas near public transit called on two land use experts on UCLA Luskin’s Urban Planning faculty: Donald Shoup and Michael Manville. The bill, AB 2097, which awaits the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom, would preempt local parking rules statewide and promises to bring down the cost of new construction. “The way you really get affordable housing is to get rid of parking requirements,” Shoup said. “That reduces the price of housing for everybody, not just low-income residents.” Experts cautioned against overnight changes if the bill becomes law. “There’s very particular circumstances in California that allow you to pull the trigger on a building with no parking, and some of those places are already free from parking rules, like San Francisco,” Manville said. Manville also co-authored a San Francisco Chronicle commentary about lessons Los Angeles can learn from San Francisco’s parking reforms.

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Read the Chronicle commentary

 

Shoup on Long Road to Parking Reform

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A Governing article on California’s move away from policies that promote car-oriented communities cited Donald Shoup, the distinguished research professor of urban planning who has spent his career studying the social, economic and environmental impact of parking policies. Shoup, author of the seminal 2005 book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” has long argued that rules mandating excess parking in new development projects add to the overlapping crises of housing affordability, urban sprawl and climate change. Influenced by Shoup’s work, cities from Buffalo to Minneapolis to San Diego have begun reducing or eliminating some of their minimum parking requirements. A new bill in California, which awaits the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom, would be a substantial acceleration of that trend — and a remarkable capstone to Shoup’s academic career, the article noted. “It’s only been 50 years,” Shoup said. “It makes me feel grateful for longevity.”

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Shoup on the Wisdom of Eliminating Parking Requirements

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Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, was mentioned in a New York Times opinion piece about the hidden consequences of parking requirements. In his book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Shoup explained that rules that require developers to include a minimum number of parking spaces increase real estate costs. Furthermore, building more parking lots creates more urban sprawl, making cities less walkable and more car-dependent. Parking lots also exacerbate the effects of global warming by creating urban heat islands that absorb and reflect heat. Shoup has also noted that parking requirements worsen inequality by forcing people who can’t afford to drive a car to still pay for parking infrastructure. “People who are too poor to own a car pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store,” Shoup wrote. Now, California is considering legislation that would eliminate or reform minimum parking regulations.

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