Donald Curran Shoup (born August 24, 1938) is an American engineer and professor in

urban planning Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...

. He is a research professor of urban planning at

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

and a noted

Georgist Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including ...

economist. His 2005 book ''

The High Cost of Free Parking ''The High Cost of Free Parking'' is an urban planning book by UCLA professor Donald Shoup dealing with the costs of free parking on society. It is structured as a criticism of the planning and regulation of parking and recommends that parking be ...

'' identifies the negative repercussions of off-street parking requirements and relies heavily on 'Georgist' insights about optimal land use and rent distribution. In 2015, the

American Planning Association The American Planning Association (APA) is a professional organization representing the field of urban planning in the United States. APA was formed in 1978, when two separate professional planning organizations, the American Institute of Pla ...

awarded Shoup the "National Planning Excellence Award for a Planning Pioneer."

Early life and career

Shoup was born in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

, in 1938. When he was two years old, his family moved to Hawaii for his father's work in the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

. He arrived in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, in the late 1950s at the peak of New Haven Mayor

Richard C. Lee Richard Charles Lee (March 12, 1916 – February 2, 2003) (sometimes called "Mr. Urban America") was an American politician who served as the Mayor of New Haven from 1954 until 1970. He was a Democrat, and was the youngest mayor of the city had e ...

's efforts to build major parking garages and improve city traffic flow with the

Oak Street Connector The Oak Street Connector, officially known as the Richard C. Lee Highway (named after former New Haven mayor Richard C. Lee), is a freeway section of Route 34 that is located in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The freeway begins ...

and other urban renewal projects. He received undergraduate degrees from

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

in electrical engineering and economics, and a doctorate in economics from Yale in 1968. After completing his PhD he headed west, assuming a post as research economist at UCLA's Institute for Government and Public Affairs. After a four-year stint as a professor at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, Shoup returned to UCLA as an Associate Professor of Urban Planning in 1974, and later was awarded a full professorship in 1980.

Parking

Originally focused on public finance and

land value tax A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land (economics), land without regard to buildings, personal property and other land improvement, improvements. It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation ta ...

theory, in 1975 Shoup was inspired by a master's thesis that found that Los Angeles County employees were almost twice as likely to drive alone than federal employees in the

Los Angeles Civic Center The Civic Center neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, is the administrative core of the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, and a complex of city, county, state, and federal government offices, buildings, and courthouses. It is locate ...

due to the availability of free parking. Shoup has extensively studied parking as a key link between transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment. In a 2004 paper titled ''The Ideal Source of Local Public Revenue'', Shoup argued for the application of

tax theory to urban parking and transportation issues. Shoup popularized the theory that an 85% occupancy rate of on-street parking spaces would be the most efficient use of public parking. When cars at any given destination in a city (a block or group of blocks) occupy more than 85% of on-street parking spaces, then cars arriving at that destination are forced to circle the block for a few minutes in order to find an unoccupied parking space. This small search time per car creates a surprisingly large amount of traffic congestion because, typically, many cars are searching for parking simultaneously during peak driving times. This wastes time and fuel and increases air pollution. Shoup calls this phenomenon of excess driving resulting from under-priced parking "cruising for parking". His research on employer-paid parking led to the passage of California’s parking cash-out law, and to changes in the

Internal Revenue Code The Internal Revenue Code (IRC), formally the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, is the domestic portion of federal statutory tax law in the United States, published in various volumes of the United States Statutes at Large, and separately as Title 26 ...

to encourage parking cash out. His research on municipal parking policies has led cities to charge fair market prices for curb parking and to dedicate the resulting meter revenue to finance added public services in the metered districts. Shoup's attempts to turn theory into practice have, on occasion, led to controversy. Shoup is a Fellow of the

American Institute of Certified Planners The American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) is the American Planning Association's professional institute. AICP certifies professionals in the United States in the field of town planning and assists planners in the areas of ethics, profess ...

, and has served as Director of the

Institute of Transportation Studies The Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California's Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, and Los Angeles campuses are centers for research, education, and scholarship in the fields of transportation planning and engineering. Faculty ...

and as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He has served as a visiting scholar at the

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, and the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

Shoup also serves on the advisory board of the Parking Reform Network.

Bibliography

Books

* Shoup, Donald and Ruth P. Mack. ''Advance land acquisition by local governments: benefit-cost analysis as an aid to policy'' (1968). Institute of Public Administration. * Shoup, Donald and Don Pickerell. ''Free Parking as a Transportation Problem.'' (1980). U.S. Department of Transportation * ——. ''Evaluating the Effects of Parking Cash Out: Eight Case Studies''. (1997) California Environmental Protection Agency. * ——. ''Parking Cash Out. (2005). APA Planning Advisory Service. * Shoup, Donald. ''

''. (2005) APA Planners Press. (Revised 2011. ) * Shoup, Donald (editor). ''Parking and the City''. (2018) Routledge. .

Selected articles

* Shoup, Donald. "The optimal timing of urban land development." (1970). ''Papers in Regional Science'' 25(1), 33-44. * Shoup, Donald, with Ronald Wilson. "Parking subsidies and travel choices: assessing the evidence." (1990). ''Transportation 17 (2), 141-157 * Shoup, Donald. "Cashing out free parking." (1982). ''Transportation Quarterly'' 36(3) * "An opportunity to reduce minimum parking requirements." (1995). ''Journal of the American Planning Association'' 61(1), 14-28. * "In lieu of required parking." (1999). ''Journal of Planning Education and Research'' 18(4), 307-320. * "The trouble with minimum parking requirements." (1999). ''Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice'' 33(7), 549-574. * "Cruising for parking." (2006). ''Transport Policy'' 13(6), 479-486.

References

External links

UCLA faculty biographyThe Access Almanac - Solar Parking Requirements
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shoup, Donald Living people Georgist economists UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs faculty University of Michigan faculty Urban theorists Yale College alumni 1938 births American male writers