Donald Shoup was one curious cat

Tributes to Professor Donald Shoup have come from around the globe

Parking Reform Network

Donald Shoup was a founding advisory board member of the Parking Reform Network (PRN), a non-profit that has documented over 3,000 cities that have adopted some of Shoup’s suggested reforms. 

PRN marked his passing by saying: “Donald’s curiosity, intelligence, passion, generosity, and kindness allowed him not only to expose the critical problems with modern parking policy, but also to ignite and nurture a movement to change them and make the world a better place.

“The Parking Reform Network wishes to provide our community with a place to share their stories and thoughts to remember and honour Donald. We will provide a copy of these messages to his family at a future date.”

Streets Blog

Shoup was a regular contributor to Streets Blog, which recalled: “Donald Shoup often joked that he set out to study parking because nobody else would. He likened himself to a cat, sniffing and marking the tyres of parked cars, while other transportation planners, he said, are more like dogs, running after and trying to bite at cars as they drive down the road.”

The site said: “The beauty of the Shoupian worldview is that it both explains the dire condition of so many cities and plots paths to recovery: He advocated for revising employer parking plans and leveraging transit to avoid game-day traffic tie-ups. Shoup’s conviction that the economic relationship between humans and automobiles had become fundamentally — but not irreparably — distorted helped launch scores of policy reforms that go far beyond the parking meter.”

Andrew Potter, director, Parking Perspectives

“I was tipped off about Professor Shoup by one of his ex-students. They enthusiastically advised me to go find his online video. He moved model cars around a streetscape. This was something different! Despite him making what could be described as a caricature of the kerbside parking problem, it was engaging. I had understood the problem and his suggested solution. He emphasised his methods when he graciously stood me lunch at UCLA. Generous with his knowledge, he indulged me and influenced my own thinking on how to approach an audience in order to convey a message.

“At subsequent meetings he continued to give, sharing a novel survey method (that we subsequently used) and being the first to suggest to me that larger cars should pay more for parking (now an emerging hot topic). He was approachable and humorous. He joked about the slow adoption of his ideas and the oft-quoted mis-representation of some of his early statistics; he weaved risqué references into parking thought and practice.

“Donald Shoup was always warm and kind, and on your side, regardless of your starting position. He made it fun. He was evidently enjoying it, and made it clear, we should too."

Colin Black, director, Mayer Brown

“During the noughties I spent a lot of time in the USA and Canada providing sustainable transport planning advisory and was often rolled out as a keynote speaker to demonstrate ‘what those crazy Europeans were up to’.

“At the time Donald Shoup was one of the few Americans promoting a more progressive and alternative approach to car-dominant planning. His research spoke to north Americans in a way that better appreciated the cultural differences. His work was a wake-up call to show how cities across the USA were wasting valuable land and resources by prioritising car storage over more efficient land uses.

“Despite parking being an often-overlooked topic, Shoup managed to make parking an exciting and essential part of transport planning. His book The High Cost of Free Parking became influential among planners, urbanists, and policymakers in North America. By fixing parking policies, Shoup argued that cities could reduce car dependency, encourage public transport use, and make streets more pedestrian-friendly – all of which contribute to sustainability and liability.

“Cities worldwide, from San Francisco to London, have adopted policies inspired by ‘Shoupian’ recommendations, leading to more efficient land use and better urban design. His work showed that something as seemingly mundane as parking could have a profound impact on housing, equity, and sustainability, making him a transformative and inspirational figure in transport planning.”

Adam Millard-Ball, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA

“I first came across Donald’s work in 2000. I wouldn’t have studied parking if it weren’t for him. And long into retirements, he was a lovely colleague and generous with his advice here at UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. We’ll carry on his work.”

Michael Manville, Chair of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

“Donald spent so much time with his writing because he wanted to make it accessible. He spent so much time with presentations because he wanted to make them entertaining. He built a method where he was always ready to explain to an activist group or a politician, ‘Hey, the missing part here is parking’.”

William Fulton, former UCLA student and former Mayor of Ventura, California

“Whenever anybody asked him how he got so focused on parking, Don always had a funny answer. If you are a public policy academic, the ones who study national issues – the presidency in particular – are at the top of the heap. Far behind were those who study state issues. At the bottom of the barrel, where Don jokingly used to argue he could be found, were those studying local government. (In some cases, local government doesn’t even count toward scholarly achievement in academia.)

“And among those studying local government, there were two issues nobody ever wanted to touch: parking and sewage. Don didn’t want to study sewage. So he studied parking.

“He wasn’t really about parking. Don was an economist, and his mission was to help people understand the underlying economics of public goods and services. Parking was simply the vehicle, one might say, that he chose to do so.”

Manny Rasores de Toro, director, MR Parking Consultancy

“Donald Shoup was an icon in urban mobility. I had the privilege of knowing Don for many years and spent some quality time with him at various parking events in the USA and Europe, including some fond memories of discussing various aspects of his book"The High Cost of Free Parking in Malaga during the 2019 EPA Congress, where after having some lovely tapas, we ended up having a good laugh about his famous saying "Saving the world one parking space at a time".

“Having met Don in social occasions, it became abundantly clear that as well as being an icon of urban mobility, he was very approachable, kind and generous, with a wicked sense of humour.

“R.I.P Don, your urban mobility legacy will be followed and remembered well into the future.”

European Parking Association

“The EPA is saddened to hear of the passing of Professor Donald Shoup. A distinguished research professor at UCLA, Professor Shoup was a pioneering figure in urban planning, renowned for his transformative work on parking policies.

“His seminal book, The High Cost of Free Parking, challenged conventional perspectives of parking practice. His insights have been instrumental in reshaping urban landscapes and transportation policies worldwide. EPA was privileged to have him attend our Congress in 2019.

“We honour his legacy and extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and the global parking and urban planning community.”

Donation

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