Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor and a leader in the movement for parking reform, died earlier this month. His work, including his 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, had a big influence on Transform’s efforts to create sustainable communities with abundant, affordable housing. In turn, Shoup was a friend to Transform and an early supporter of our work around parking. 

When Transform launched our SPOT SJ initiative to make more efficient use of parking in San Jose, Shoup was one of the first to reach out and offer his support. He was a committed advocate who managed to stay on top of parking reform priorities nationally and was always available to lend his expertise.

Hear about Shoup’s research and vision in his own words here.

Saving the world, one parking spot at a time

Shoup’s work laid out clearly the negative effects of the abundant free parking found in many U.S. cities. Parking lots take up valuable real estate that could be used for housing, businesses, public amenities, or green space. 

Easy availability of free parking spots in particular induces driving, leading to congestion and pollution. An abundance of on-street parking also makes it difficult to build out networks of protected bike lanes and bus-only lanes, suppressing the number of people willing to opt for those more sustainable modes of travel. Parking structures that are islands surrounded by parked cars make neighborhoods less walkable and encourage driving. 

Shoup’s work started a revolution in how we think about and plan for parking. Since his book first came out, many California cities have reduced or done away with minimum parking requirements that made developers build excess parking capacity, making housing more expensive to build. State law has changed as well, reducing parking minimums for buildings near transit hubs.

Transform’s parking reform campaigns

Transform first connected with Donald Shoup when we released our 2002 report, Housing Shortage/Parking Surplus. He loved the cover of it and asked to use that photo of San Jose, and used it at many of his events.

In 2023, we published a report, Parking Revolution/Housing Solution, which shows how reducing parking minimums is key to solving California’s housing shortage. 

Our SPOT SJ project leverages new technologies to make better use of underutilized parking garages, freeing up street parking spots for civic space rather than car storage. A city full of parking spaces, most of which sit empty most of the time, is bad land use. Using apps to flex the use of existing parking throughout the day has the potential to revolutionize the way we build and think about public spaces.

Shoup was also a fan of Transform’s GreenTRIP tool, which shows ways that new developments can limit driving trips generated by the building.

We are grateful for Donald Shoup’s insightful writing and efforts to promote understanding of the negative effects of the parking glut on urban development. His legacy will live on in our work and the work of transportation and housing advocates around the world.

“Donald Shoup let his light shine and sparked countless thousands to his cause of transforming parking into anything else. He did this through ingenious edutainment, which is modeled by many effective disciples. He says he has to be funny before anyone will take parking seriously. Nothing could be truer. He clearly articulated how excess parking deeply exacerbates inequality and reliably gives us the asphalt-coated communities most of us actually don’t want. We will miss him deeply. He had always only the most wholehearted encouragement that you’d expect from the best professor and coach ever. We are so grateful to have his teachings recorded in many ways an

— Ann Cheng, founder of Transform’s GreenTRIP program and Parking Reform Network board member.