Donald Shoup Earns Highest Recognition from Planning Academy The esteemed Urban Planning professor is named Distinguished Educator by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning

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By Les Dunseith

Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, is the 2017 recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award — the highest honor bestowed by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).

The award is conferred every two years to honor significant contributions to the field of planning, and it recognizes scholarly contributions, teaching excellence, public service, and contributions that have made a significant difference to planning scholarship, education, and practice. Shoup is the second current member of the UCLA Urban Planning faculty to win this award; Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs won in 2006 when he was at UC Berkeley. Two other UCLA faculty members also won the award: John Friedmann in 1987, and Harvey Perloff, the inaugural recipient in 1983.

Perloff and Shoup are two of only three people who have won both the ACSP’s Distinguished Educator Award, which is given to academics, and the American Planning Association’s National Excellence Award for a Planning Pioneer, which is given to planners who have made important innovations in planning practice. This unusual combination of both awards highlights UCLA’s commitment to both academic excellence and practical relevance in urban planning.

Shoup said the latest award is particularly gratifying because it’s for education. “Universities reward you mainly for research and publication. It’s why we say, ‘Publish or perish.’ And I think most academics believe their lasting contribution will be their research,” he said. “But I think that our most important contribution is through teaching. If we have any influence — if there is going to be anything to remember after we are gone — I think it will be through the successful careers of our students who will be changing the world for the better.”

Professor Vinit Mukhija, the current chair of Urban Planning, remembers coming to UCLA as a job candidate when Shoup was department chair. Shoup’s manner then became a model for Mukhija to follow years later. “Donald was one of the first people I met on campus. His philosophy is to help people feel comfortable so they can share and present their best ideas. He takes that philosophy into the classroom, where he likes to engage students in a deliberative, non-confrontational manner as they discuss ideas that challenge accepted policy practices.”

During his tenure of more than 40 years at UCLA, Shoup has built an impressive record of accomplishment and scholarship, producing insightful research that has been truly influential on public policy. According to Urban Planning Professor Brian Taylor, Shoup is an “internationally recognized authority on parking policies and their effect on urban development and transportation. Though largely overlooked by academics for years, parking policies significantly influence land use development and travel behavior in U.S. metropolitan areas and in rapidly developing urban areas across the globe.”

Distinguished Professor Donald Shoup talks about his research on parking policy with a delegation of planners who visited campus from China in September 2017.

“The High Cost of Free Parking,” Shoup’s widely acclaimed book (originally published in 2005, and revised and reprinted in 2011), was based on decades of research on parking policies. It also was based on years of listening.

“When I was younger, I focused much more on analysis and publication. As I began to see how policies got adopted, I became much more oriented toward the concerns of public officials,” Shoup said of how his approach has evolved over the years. “I have always tried to engage with practicing planners and city officials who will have to implement anything that I recommend — to hear their objections and concerns.”

The Distinguished Educator Award is selected from candidates nominated by faculty at ACSP member schools, which consist of universities with departments and programs offering planning degrees or programs that offer degrees affiliated with planning. Most are in the United States, but some member schools are located internationally.

“The conventional wisdom on good parking policy across the world is now defined by Donald’s research. Our students are fortunate to have been involved in the development of these ideas from the start.” — Professor Vinit Mukhija, chair of Urban Planning

The nomination letter included testimonials about Shoup from renowned scholars at UCLA and other universities:

  •  “… in recent years he has become one of the most widely cited urban planning scholars in the world. … [Shoup] is literally the world’s leading expert in the subject matter on which he specializes while admirably fulfilling all of the other responsibilities of a senior faculty member.” (Martin Wachs, UCLA and UC Berkeley)
  • “Don is probably the most creative, original planning scholar who has been at work during the past several decades, and this is certainly so within the field of transportation.” (Alan Altshuler, Harvard University)
  • “What impresses me most … is his willingness to take his ideas and writings and be fully engaged in public debate and action over them. It is not an exaggeration to say that he has been one of the most powerful forces in the nation for bringing sanity and good sense to our work with urban communities.” (Michael Dukakis, UCLA, former Massachusetts Governor and Democratic Presidential nominee)
  • “Over the years I watched him create literally many generations of students who went on to implement his ideas in cities throughout the U.S. and world. It would be difficult indeed to find another scholar who has had as much impact on the practice of urban planning.” (Genevieve Giuliano, University of Southern California)

Shoup’s most important scholarly contribution has been his research related to how parking policies affect land use and urban travel.

Said Taylor, “Through more than three dozen publications on the role of parking in cities, Professor Shoup has almost single-handedly convinced a previously skeptical audience of planners and elected officials about the critical importance of parking policy to urban planning, transforming planning practice to a degree unmatched by any of his contemporaries in the planning academy.”

“The conventional wisdom on good parking policy across the world is now defined by Donald’s research,” Mukhija said. “Our students are fortunate to have been involved in the development of these ideas from the start.”

Shoup said that his research approach tends toward finding solutions to practical problems. “My focus is to look at areas where the prices that people pay are substantially below the cost of what they consume. Traffic congestion is a good example. Drivers in peak hour traffic pay far less than the cost they impose on other drivers and in the process they aggravate traffic congestion.”

His forte — parking policy — is another example. “The price that drivers pay for parking is usually far below the cost of providing it,” Shoup said. “Drivers park free at the end of 99 percent of all automobile trips in the United States. But all this free parking costs a lot of money.”

As his research progressed, he was struck by the lack of equity in parking. People who are too poor to own a car, or who prefer not to own one, receive no benefit.

“If you ride the bus or ride a bike or walk to work, you get nothing. But if you drive to work, you get to park free in a very expensive parking place. It leads to overuse of automobiles, creating air pollution and traffic congestion.”

When cities charge fair market prices for on-street parking and spend the meter revenue to finance added public services, they can improve the lives of everyone. Shoup’s work has inspired cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pasadena, Austin, Houston, Seattle, and many others to change their approach to parking.

Shoup has four degrees in electrical engineering and economics from Yale University. At UCLA he has served as chair of Urban Planning and as director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. And he practices what he preaches — walking or biking to campus every day, even after his “retirement” in 2015.

This dedication comes in part from his perception that he has been fortunate to have worked in Los Angeles, a city where his ideas about land use, traffic, and parking are particularly important and where civic leaders — some of whom count themselves among his legion of followers, known as Shoupistas — have been willing to listen to his advice.

Great city. Great university. Great professor. It all adds up to a career filled with great accomplishments.

The Problems and Possibilities of Parking Highlights of the latest issue of the Lewis Center’s ACCESS magazine

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By John A. Mathews

The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs brings you a special edition of ACCESS dedicated to the most controversial topic in transportation: parking. Parking invokes immediate emotional responses. We experience joy when a stranger gives us his or her parking spot and rage when someone steals a space we waited 20 minutes for. And what better thrill is there than running to your car to feed the meter just in time to avoid a ticket?

The issues surrounding parking, however, go beyond our immediate reactions. Parking takes up valuable space that could go to better use. It can cause congestion and inflict additional costs on people who can’t even afford to own cars. But parking can also bring social benefits to a community. In this issue, ACCESS explores the good, the bad and the ugly of parking.

Parking as far as the eye can see

Whether you’re building a bar, a hair salon, or a zoo, you will have to build parking spaces to go with it. Now, after decades of development under excessive minimum parking requirements, parking dominates our cities. But how much parking is there really?

In their article, “Do Cities Have Too Much Parking?” Andrew Fraser, Mikhail Chester, Juan Matute and Ram Pendyala explore the distribution of parking in Los Angeles County and how the county’s parking infrastructure evolved over time. The authors found that, as of 2010, Los Angeles County had 18.6 million parking spaces. This amounts to more than 200 square miles of parking, or 14 percent of the county’s incorporated land area. So now the question is: Do we really need all of this parking?

Fraser is a postdoctoral researcher in Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. Chester is associate professor in Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. Matute is associate director of the Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Pendyala is a professor of Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University.

Keeping people from cruising

One possible solution to cruising for parking comes in the form of performance-based pricing, where the rate at the parking meter changes based on demand. The theory is that, with the right price, there will always be one or two empty spaces for drivers to park. Drivers can then park sooner instead of cruising for parking over longer distances, causing additional congestion. But do performance-based pricing programs actually help reduce cruising?

In “Cruising for Parking: Lessons from San Francisco,” Adam Millard-Ball, Rachel Weinberger and Robert Hampshire evaluate whether SFpark, San Francisco’s performance-based pricing initiative, actually reduced cruising. By simulating parking occupancy using parking sensor data, block length, and the probability that a block is full, the authors were able to conclude that SFpark did indeed work. The average cruising distance fell by 50 percent, but people don’t cruise as far as they think.

Millard-Ball is assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz. Weinberger is a transportation consultant based in New York City. Hampshire is assistant research professor in the Transportation Research Group at the University of Michigan.

Parking theories versus parking practice

The idea is simple: Charge more for parking and you should get more open parking spaces. Charge less for parking and parking spaces should fill up. But does this theory play out in the real world?

In their article, “Market-Priced Parking in Theory and Practice,” Michael Manville and Daniel Chatman evaluate how San Francisco’s market-priced parking program affected parking occupancy and cruising. They found that, when parking prices rose on a block, the block’s “average occupancy rate” for parking fell. The problem, however, is that drivers look for vacant parking spaces, not average occupancy rates. The longer the time included in average parking occupancy rates, the more misleading they can be.

Manville is assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Chatman is associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the UC Berkeley.

Making do with less

When you’re in a crowded parking lot trying to get in some holiday shopping, you might think there’s not enough parking. But if you drive around that same parking lot after hours, you can see the vast waste of space that occurs daily.

In his latest article, “Parking Management for Smart Growth,” Rick Willson asks how we can transition from too much parking to a more efficient use of a smaller parking supply. He argues that transportation demand management can reduce parking demand by encouraging drivers to carpool, walk, bike, or take public transit. Parking management strategies can further reduce the number of parking spaces needed through increased space efficiency. The use of sensors and sophisticated pricing meters can ensure open parking spots and help drivers find them.

Willson is professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Cal Poly Pomona, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

London changes its parking requirements

Do we build so much parking because it’s needed or because it’s required? Parking theorists say that the market would provide fewer parking spaces if parking requirements did not exist. The evidence of this has been inconclusive, however, until now.

In his article, “From Parking Minimums to Parking Maximums in London,” Zhan Guo evaluates what happened after London reversed its parking requirements in 2004. The city removed the previous minimum parking requirements and instead adopted new maximum requirements for all metropolitan developments. What’s interesting is that the new maximum parking limits were often lower than the previous minimum requirements. What’s even more interesting is that most developments provided far less than the maximum limit allowed. This means that, with the previous minimum parking requirements, London was requiring far more parking than the market demanded.

Guo is associate professor of Urban Planning and Transportation Policy at the Wagner School of Public Service, New York University.

Parking: the new beachfront property

Many commercial areas have implemented Parking Benefit Districts that spend meter revenue for public services in the metered areas. But can Parking Benefit Districts work in purely residential neighborhoods as well?

In his article, “Parking Benefit Districts,” Donald Shoup argues that a residential Parking Benefit District can manage on-street parking and provide a neighborhood with revenue to clean and repair sidewalks, plant trees, and remove grime from subway stations. He also argues that residential Parking Benefit Districts can help unbundle the cost of parking from the cost of housing to create more affordable housing. If cities manage their curb parking as valuable real estate, they can stop subsidizing cars, congestion, pollution, and carbon emissions, and instead provide better public services and more affordable housing.

Shoup is editor of ACCESS and Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning in UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Spring Issue Of ACCESS Magazine Now Available This issue of ACCESS Magazine covers all kinds of transportation: airplanes, cars, public transit, and running. There’s even a nod to ice-skating.

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ACCESS Magazine is edited by Donald Shoup, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, Emeritus, at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

SPRING 2016 Contents:

Going the Extra Mile: Intelligent Energy Management of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Kanok Boriboonsomsin, Guoyuan Wu, and Matthew Barth

If you were a hybrid vehicle owner and you were driving down the freeway, would you know the best time to use gas and the best time to use the battery? Probably not, and most hybrid cars don’t know either. In fact, most plug-in hybrids just deplete their battery completely before switching to gas, which is actually an inefficient use of energy.

In “Going the Extra Mile: Intelligent Energy Management of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” Kanok Boriboonsomsin, Guoyuan Wu, and Matthew Barth explore how hybrids can better manage battery use to get an extra five to ten miles out of each gallon of gas. By incorporating real-time information on where a car is, where it’s going, traffic levels, incline, and a host of other variables, an intelligent management strategy can save fuel and reduce emissions by 10 to 12 percent.

Manage Flight Demand or Build Airport Capacity? 

Megan S. Ryerson and Amber Woodburn

Imagine you’re at the airport and the security checkpoint is crowded. You finally reach your gate but your flight is delayed because the runway is full. “Why don’t they build more runways?” you ask, but maybe that’s not the right question.

In their article, “Manage Flight Demand or Build Airport Capacity?” Megan Ryerson and Amber Woodburn discuss two ways to manage air traffic congestion: adding runways or shifting flights through demand management. Often local governments and airport authorities think that airport expansion equates to economic development even though there is little research to back this theory. Meanwhile, demand management strategies, like congestion pricing, aren’t even considered as an option to reduce air traffic congestion. Why is this the case — and should our priorities change?

A Driving Factor in Moving to Opportunity
Evelyn Blumenberg and Gregory Pierce

Does living in a wealthier area mean you’ll get a better job? Or any job? The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) Program was an experiment that provided housing vouchers to low-income households, some of whom had to use the vouchers in wealthier neighborhoods. The research showed, however, that the location of the housing vouchers had no effect on employment. So what did affect employment?

In “A Driving Factor in Moving to Opportunity,” Evelyn Blumenberg and Gregory Pierce show that employment in the MTO program was affected most by access to transportation. They discovered that, while transit access was associated with maintaining employment, having a car was associated with maintaining and even gaining employment over time. The results suggest that policies to promote car access may be the best way to connect low-income workers with jobs.

Investing in Transportation while Preserving Fragile Environments

Martin Wachs and Jaimee Lederman

Have you ever seen a moose hitching a ride so that he could continue roaming several miles from where he started? Neither have I. But when governments approve transportation projects, they often offset the environmental costs by preserving dispersed tracts of land, sometimes hundreds of miles from each other. Instead of preserving several pieces of land in different areas, wouldn’t it be better to preserve large connected expanses?

In their recent article, “Investing in Transportation while Preserving Fragile Environments,” Martin Wachs and Jaimee Lederman discuss regional mitigation efforts through the use of Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs). HCPs include a list of transportation projects, their potential biological impacts, and ways to mitigate such impacts on a broad scale. By bundling mitigation requirements, transportation projects can save time, money, and habitats. 

Cutting the Cost of Parking Requirements

Donald Shoup

How many parking spaces should be required for each house? Each restaurant? Each zoo? Most developers have to adhere to “minimum parking requirements,” but those requirements are often created without any research into what the market actually demands.

In his article, “Cutting the Cost of Parking Requirements,” Donald Shoup argues that we should remove minimum parking requirements because they’re creating vast expanses of empty parking lots instead of the walkable neighborhoods we all desire. And the cost of these parking spaces is shocking. A single parking space can cost more to build than the net worth of many American households, yet those households end up sharing the cost burden of parking requirements. It may not solve every injustice, but reducing or removing minimum parking requirements can be a step towards a more equitable society.

ALMANAC: Running to Work 

Robert Cervero

There’s a way to get to work that actually reduces your stress levels, has no traffic, and lets you skip the gym at the end of the day. We’re talking about the latest — and sweatiest — trend in commuting: the run commute.

In his article, “Running to Work,” Robert Cervero explores this new form of active travel that’s taking congested cities by storm. But what would make someone want to run all the way into work? In a survey of run commuters ¾ and by trying it himself ¾ Cervero finds that these vehicle-less travelers benefit most from being outdoors, reducing stress, cutting down on costs, and saving time by exercising during their commute. Of course, there are challenges as well, such as the logistics of getting clean clothes to the office. But if employers can help encourage run-commuting with some on-site showers and a free breakfast, their employees will be healthier for it.

Latest Issue Of ACCESS Magazine Now Available Fall ACCESS Magazine Looks at Travel Behavior, Transit Oriented Development

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If car drivers knew more about the impacts of their travel decisions, would they modify them, hop on a bike or skip a trip? Does developing housing near rail stations (Transit Oriented Development) change travel habits or decrease car ownership? And, how can groups with opposing political views find common ground and move forward?

These questions and more are the subject matter of the Fall issue of ACCESS Magazine, edited by Donald Shoup, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, Emeritus, at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Fall 2015 Contents:

Quantified Traveler: Travel Feedback Meets the Cloud to Change Behavior

Raja Sengupta and Joan L. Walker

Most people are aware that car emissions harm the environment, but they continue to drive anyway.  What would it take for people to drive less and use other means of travel more? Authors Sengupta and Walker try to get people to walk, bike, and take transit more through the use of a new program, Quantified Traveler. With this program, respondents were able to track their travel behavior and compare it with their peers and the national average. The newfound awareness of individual habits, especially in comparison to others, lead to driving distances dropping and respondents showing an actual change in their attitude towards travel.

Unraveling the Modal Impacts of Bikesharing

Susan Shaheen and Elliot Martin

You’ve probably seen them in most major cities: bikes readily available for checkout, used by commuters and tourists alike.  But how are bikesharing programs influencing other forms of travel?  Are you more likely to take the bus if you also share a bike? Shaheen and Martin surveyed bikesharers in four major cities to see how their travel behavior changed over the course of time. They discovered that, aside from biking more, bikesharers also drive less and own fewer vehicles.  In addition, bikesharing serves as an important first- and last-mile connector for public transit.

Does Transit-Oriented Development Need the Transit?

Daniel G. Chatman

Developing housing near rail stations is expensive, but it’s supposed to encourage people to walk, bike, and take transit. Does it? Chatman explores the effect of rail on people’s travel habits.  When all other factors were considered (bus access, job and population density, and housing type, etc.), rail access had no effect on auto ownership. What did have an effect? Parking availability.

Life-Cycle Impacts of Transit-Oriented Development

Matthew J. Nahlik and Mikhail Chester

There is little research on the impact of TODs on the environment and household costs. There is even less research on the impacts of building TODs.  For that reason, Nahlik and Chester developed an assessment to measure these impacts. The authors evaluated redevelopment around LA Metro’s Gold and Orange lines, including emissions from the rehabilitation of nearby buildings, changes in household energy use, and reductions in automobile use as households shift to alternate travel modes. The result was that proposed developments could reduce GHG emissions by over 35 percent compared with business-as-usual developments. The upfront costs to construct these TODs would be offset by emission reductions over time from residents who are able to change their behaviors and break away from car-dependent habits.

Changing Lanes

Joseph F. DiMento and Cliff Ellis

After World War II, states were provided with a 90 percent federal match for the construction of freeways meant to penetrate urban cores, clear out slums, and renew central business districts. By the late 1960s, however, this love affair with the freeway ended as citizen protests forced public officials to reassess the effects of their intruding highways. “Changing Lanes,” based on the book by the same name, explores the controversy, racism, and the legal battles associated with some of these urban highways. As several cities plan on demolishing their urban highways for other creative developments, DiMento and Ellis examine possible opportunities for them, including a chance for more public transit.

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Common Ground

Karen Trapenberg Frick

We’ve all been in an argument where neither side seems to be listening to the other.  We start trying to “win” instead of figuring out a solution that works.  This is even truer when dealing with people who ideologically opposed to our own views. So how do we move forward?  Especially when the political process is involved?

Karen Trapenberg Frick emphasizes the importance of finding any areas of common ground in order to move forward. In the course of the author’s political planning research, there were always areas where both sides of an argument could agree.  Whether it was electric vehicles not paying their fair share of transportation costs, or questioning the wisdom of running costly rail lines in low-density areas, there was always a common ground to be found if participants considered their opponents as legitimate adversaries rather than as enemies unworthy of engagement.

For more information about ACCESS and to view the Fall Edition please visit: www.accessmagazine.org

ACCESS Magazine is published by the University California Center on Economic Competitiveness in Transportation (UCONNECT), and is housed at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Institute of Transportation Studies.

New Issue of ACCESS Magazine Now Available The latest issue of ACCESS magazine is now available online at accessmagazine.org

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By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

 

The latest issue of ACCESS magazine is now available online at accessmagazine.org.

 

The upcoming issue will feature the following topics:

  • Informal Parking: Turning Problems Into Solutions (Donald Shoup)

  • The Social Context of Travel (Michael J. Smart & Nicholas J. Klein)

  • The First Big-Box Store in Davis (Susan L. Handy, Kristin Lovejoy, Gian-Claudia Sciara, Deborah Salon, and Patricia L. Mokhtarian)

  • Suburban Transit in Mexico City (Erick Guerra)

  • A Bathtub Model of Downtown Traffic Congestion (Richard Arnott)

  • The ACCESS Almanac: Painting in the Present, Imagining the Future (Richard Wilson)

  • Can we have sustainable transportation without making people drive less or give up suburban living? (Mark Delucchi and Kenneth S. Kurani)

 

“Informal Parking: Turning Problems Into Solutions,” is an article written by former EIC and recently retired Urban Planning professor, Donald Shoup. In honor of his work and dedication to the Luskin over the past 41 years, a special tribute website was created to celebrate his legacy. This site features the story of Shoup’s game-changing research in urban planning, along with anecdotes from his supporters (fondly labelled “Shoupistas”) and information about his books and publications.

 

ACCESS Magazine is housed in the Institute of Transportation Studies and features research funded by the UC Center on Economic Competitiveness. The magazine has been publishing since 1992, and it took home the 2014 National Planning Award for a Communication Initiative from the American Planning Association.

 

 

 

Fellowship Donor’s Life is a Window on History With her support of an endowed fellowship for urban planning students focusing on transportation, Pat Shoup hopes to demonstrate the power of education

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By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

“I have very happy memories of my childhood in Northern Ireland,” Pat Shoup says. “The way I think of my life is before the U.S. and after I came to the U.S., in two distinct parts.”

Though she remembers her childhood fondly, playing field hockey, becoming head girl of her high school, and obtaining the highest honor as a Queen’s Guide in the equivalent of Girl Scouts, her environment had always been sensitive to the history of the “troubles” that partitioned Ireland in 1921. Although she loved Northern Ireland, which was peaceful when she grew up there, she chose to go to the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and remembers feeling lucky to study in such a beautiful medieval town.

A year after graduating, Pat met a young American named Donald Shoup when her brother invited him to their parents’ house in Northern Ireland. The whole family fell in love with Donald, including Pat. After he returned to the U.S., she and Donald wrote to each other for two years. In 1964 they arranged to meet again in Heidelberg, Germany, where she was teaching English at a Berlitz School. That summer they became engaged, and in 1965 she emigrated to the United States, a journey that would mark a turning point in her life and career.

When she landed in New York, Pat Shoup was 25 years old and excited to embark on a new journey, a journey that began with a Humber bicycle constructed for her by Donald from a kit.

Having left everything behind, Shoup said she was in need of a job and attempted to continue her teaching career by taking a summer MAT course at Yale. After struggling through a temporary job trying to teach American history, she realized teaching was not for her.

In 1968, Shoup and her husband moved to California when when he won a postdoctoral appointment at UCLA, and she began her career as an editor for academic journals by working freelance for Sage Publications. When the University of Michigan appointed her husband an assistant professor, she worked for the university press in Ann Arbor and was the editor for the 1970 Survey of Consumer Finances. When the couple moved back to Los Angeles, Pat worked on campus for various journals, including Law & Society Review at the UCLA Law School and The Journal of Symbolic Logic, as well as doing freelance jobs for the university press.

Though she has edited numerous academic journals, Shoup’s passion for writing lies in fiction and poetry. Some of her poetry has been published, and one of her poems was published in a collection of works selected by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.

“Writing is the thread that seems to run through my life,” Shoup says. “I wrote letters every week to my parents (when I came to the U.S.). You couldn’t just phone somebody. My life has been strung along the line of writing letters to people who mattered most to me or my own ambition to be a writer.”

Despite veering away from her own ambition of becoming an author, Shoup remains interested in writing fiction and a memoir. She took a UCLA extension course on memoir writing and says she has written fragments of a memoir that she wants to complete one day. “I want to remember what it was like in Northern Ireland when I was young because it was such a happy place then, not as the media later represented it. I was terribly upset by what happened,” she says. “I would like to let people know that it wasn’t always like that.”

Some of her work, including a published short story “Times of Trouble,” has been inspired by her feelings of displacement after the Northern Ireland “troubles” reignited in 1969. Shoup remembers being shocked to learn that one place she remembered fondly from her childhood was later the scene of Lord Louis Mountbatten’s assassination. “During the Second World War, my parents would take us for summer holidays to the west of Ireland to Mullaghmore, where I learned to swim in the harbor,” Shoup says. “Years later, that was the place where Mountbatten (Prince Philip’s uncle), who owned a castle there, was blown up by an IRA bomb planted in his boat. I heard the news in 1979 on the radio here in Los Angeles. I felt as if someone had hit me with lightning.”

Shoup said she and her husband share a passion for writing and editing to produce the best possible work. “You need a lot of things to keep you together and interested in each other,” she said. “I’m very proud of him and we have worked together on his writing because it’s so important to both of us.”

Pat and Donald Shoup edited The High Cost of Free Parking together and she has played a key role in its success. She has also played a role in funding the Donald and Pat Shoup Endowed Fellowship in Urban Planning.

“I care about how students can be helped because we both believe that education is the most important thing that young people can get,” she said. “We decided a long time ago we’d like to leave some money to help future students, and Donald’s retirement seems like a good time to do that. What amazes me is how many other people have contributed so generously to the fellowship, and we are both extremely grateful to them all.”

Donald Shoup

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Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. His research has focused on transportation, public finance, and land economics.

In his 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup recommended that cities should (1) charge fair market prices for on-street parking, (2) spend the revenue to benefit the metered areas, and (3) remove off-street parking requirements. In his 2018 edited book, Parking and the City, Shoup and 45 other academic and practicing planners examined the results in cities that have adopted these three reforms. The successful outcomes show that parking reforms can improve cities, the economy, and the environment.

Shoup is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and an Honorary Professor at the Beijing Transportation Research Center. He has received the American Planning Association’s National Excellence Award for a Planning Pioneer and the American Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Distinguished Educator Award.

Link to Donald Shoup’s web page.

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Professor Donald Shoup to Retire in June The popular professor of urban planning has taught at UCLA for 41 years.

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After 41 years of teaching at UCLA, Donald Shoup, distinguished professor of Urban Planning, will retire on June 30, 2015.

Shoup is widely known as the “parking guru” whose ideas on parking policies have been implemented in cities around the world. His influential book, The High Cost of Free Parking, has led a growing number of cities to adapt new policies for parking requirements and to charge fair market prices for curb parking. Shoup’s revolutionary ideas have gained an international following of students, alumni and urban planning professionals.

Shoup has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and the World Bank, and has served as Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. The one-time Chair of Luskin’s Urban Planning department also serves as editor of ACCESS, a transportation magazine published by the University of California.

“I can’t think of anyone who has made more scholarly contributions to the field of parking and transportation than Donald Shoup,” said Dean Frank Gilliam. “Don’s course on parking is wildly popular and receives terrific reviews from students. We are deeply appreciative and in awe of the impact he has made here at UCLA Luskin.”

A retirement celebration honoring Shoup will be held on Saturday, May 30. More details and information on how to attend will be announced in the coming weeks.

 

The Future of Civic Leadership Luncheon held in honor of Michael Dukakis' 20th year teaching

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In honor of Gov. Michael Dukakis’ 20th year teaching at UCLA, faculty, students and friends of the School joined together for a luncheon in support of the Michael S. Dukakis Internship program.

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The setting was a picturesque private home near the Getty Center.

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Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., and School benefactor Meyer Luskin welcomed guests to the event.

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 Attending were Jill Black Zalben, Joan Ashton, Stanley Black, Marvin Caesar and Dean Gilliam.

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UCLA Luskin board member Annette Shapiro and Joyce Brandman spoke with Luskin.

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Murray Pepper and UCLA Luskin board member Vicki Reynolds talked with Pat Shoup and Professor Donald Shoup.

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Jill Black Zalben, former L.A. Controller Wendy Greuel and Christine Essel, president of Southern California Grantmakers, enjoyed the afternoon.

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Former L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Professor Martin Wachs, Meyer Luskin, Professor Donald Shoup and Bob Wilson took in the view.

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California Assembly members Jimmy Gomez and Matt Dababneh mugged for the camera.

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Frank Lopez MPP ’10, KCRW host Steve Chiotakis and Melissa Peraza.

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Christine and Jordan Kaplan chatted with Renee Luskin.

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Public Policy student and Dukakis Internship recipient Nelson Esparza spoke with Veronica Melvin MPP ’01 and Riverside Mayor Rusty Bailey MPP ’99.

Latest Issue Of ACCESS Magazine Now Available; New Website Launched The magazine which translates academic research into readable prose is now available at accessmagazine.org

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The Fall 2014 issue of ACCESS magazine is hot off of the press and now available to view at the brand-new ACCESS website, accessmagazine.org. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find in the latest issue:

Phantom Trips

Adam Millard-Ball

When you see a new development being constructed, the first thing you might think is how much traffic it might bring to your neighborhood. (Well, that and will there be a good coffee shop there.) You may not be aware that developers pay more in costs based on the estimated number of new trips their developments create. But when that new coffee shop gets put into your neighborhood, how many new trips are really created?

Trip Generation for Smart Growth Projects

Robert J. Schneider, Susan L. Handy, and Kevan Shafizadeh

Developers must evaluate how much a new project will add to local traffic levels. If deemed necessary, developers must then invest in substantial capacity-adding projects, which can make some infill projects financially infeasible. But how much new vehicle traffic are developments creating, especially in smart growth areas?

Pounds that Kill

Michael L. Anderson and Maximilian Auffhammer

When you buy a car, you may not be thinking of the effect you have on other people. But more and more, we see that there are public costs to private choices. Your car may produce more pollution than another car, thus leading to an environmental impact affecting others. But what about the weight of your car? How does that affect others?

Fuel-Efficiency Standards: Are Greener Cars Safer?

Mark Jacobsen

The United States has strengthened its fuel efficiency regulations several times in recent years in an effort to reduce environmental, economic, and energy costs. These standards have led to an in increase fuel efficiency by manufacturing lighter, lower-horsepower vehicles. But are these new fuel-efficient vehicles safe?

An Innovative Path to Sustainable Transportation

Dan Sperling

At one time, it looked as though humanity might go on a greenhouse gas (GHG) diet simply by running out of fossil fuels. But due to new and improved technologies for finding and extracting oil, including extraction techniques like fracking and horizontal drilling, we are far from running out of oil. So how do we cut back on GHG levels, and the environmental impact they have, if we’re not running out of oil?

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Making Parking Meters Popular

Donald Shoup

When it comes to making a list of things people are excited about, parking meters are not just near the bottom, they’re not on the list. So how can government officials gain local support for parking meters? Donald Shoup’s answer: grant parking discounts to residents.