Read Shoup’s full obituary on the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs website.
Donald Shoup, distinguished professor emeritus of urban planning, whose decades of teaching and scholarship at UCLA greatly influenced the field of land-use planning, as well as generations of scholars, students and urban planners, died Feb. 6 in Los Angeles following a short illness. He was 86.
A UCLA faculty member since 1974 and a titan in the field of urban planning, Shoup was renowned for his pathbreaking research into how cities manage, or mismanage, parking spaces. This work, which demonstrated that seemingly mundane provisions in zoning codes had rendered many places overly dependent on driving, brought him academic accolades and made him a hero for a generation of urbanists determined to repair American cities.
Visit the Donald Shoup tribute page to read more and share memories.
Much of this prestige flowed from his landmark book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” first published in 2005 and revised in 2011. In it, Shoup argued that when cities fail to price the parking on their streets, curb spaces fill up and become hard to find. Cities then compound the problem by creating, through zoning codes, excessive amounts of off-street parking. Together, he said, these errors result in increased traffic congestion, air pollution, sprawl, housing costs and global warming, along with a host of other economic and urban design problems.
His proposed solution? Start pricing parking on the street and stop requiring parking off the street.
The book became a classic in urban planning circles, and Shoup’s reform ideas gained steady acceptance in cities worldwide. The Parking Reform Network, a national nonprofit founded to advance Shoup’s ideas, has documented over 3,000 cities that have adopted some of his suggested reforms. In 2018, the American Planning Association included the publication of “The High Cost of Free Parking” in its timeline of key events in city planning since 1900. Shoup edited a follow-up book, “Parking and the City,” which also became a vital resource for reformers.
Among planners, government officials and activists, he became known as “UCLA’s parking guru,” a “parking rock star” and the “Shoup Dogg.” A Facebook group, thousands strong, sprung up organically to help spread his message. He even found his way into pop culture as the subject of a animated feature on the television show “Adam Ruins Everything.”
During his time at UCLA, Shoup served as chair of UCLA Luskin’s urban planning department, directed the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and was honored with numerous awards for his research and scholarship. He retired in 2015 but remained an active member of the UCLA Luskin community and had been scheduled to teach his famous parking class this spring.
Tribute gifts in Shoup’s memory can be made to the Donald and Pat Shoup Endowed Fellowship Fund in Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, which will support fellowships for graduate students focusing on transportation studies. Gifts can also be made by check, payable to the UCLA Foundation. (Please include “Fund #82172E” in the memo field and mail to: The UCLA Foundation; PO Box 7145; Pasadena, CA 91109-9903.)
