LA parking reform pioneer remembered for humor, dedication

The experience of roaming L.A. streets in search of a parking spot is much too common. After half-an-hour of hunting and losing out to other drivers for free curbside spots, you slouch in the driver’s seat and wonder: Why is this all so difficult?

Donald Shoup, who used academic rigor and humor to find answers to this exact dilemma, died at home in Los Angeles in hospice care on Feb. 6 at age 86. Shoup was a professor emeritus of urban planning at UCLA, where he worked from 1974 to 2015. He influenced cities across the world to rethink how something as mundane as parking can revitalize urban life.

In doing so, Shoup gained a vibrant community of followers inspired by his work.

Donald Shoup’s impact

Shoup began pursuing parking studies in the 1970s.

“People thought it was crazy, they thought it was overly pedestrian and narrow, they thought he was wasting time,” Mike Manville, chair of urban planning at UCLA, told LAist remembering his friend of more than 20 years. “None of that really bothered him.”

In addition to being a warm and genial person, Manville said he’ll remember his teacher, dissertation advisor, and eventual colleague as someone who recognized the skepticism about his field of study and used it to his advantage.

“I think that’s why he put so much work into writing so clearly, trying to write in a very entertaining way with references to pop culture and the sort of dry wit would come through,” Manville said.

Years of studying parking culminated in Shoup’s pioneering work, The High Cost of Free Parking, which was published in 2005. In the book, Shoup, whose academic background was in economics, argues that cities should charge market prices for curbside parking and remove requirements for developers to build off-street parking. These policies inflate reliance on cars, Shoup wrote, and disincentivize people from using alternate modes of travel, resulting in a misallocation of urban space.

Paid curbside parking isn’t necessarily a popular idea at face value, Shoup explained — drivers could see it as paying for something that once was free and business owners might fear slower business as a result. So, Shoup said, cities could invest money from parking meters back into the community to improve lighting, sidewalks and offer other services that benefit the public.

Shoup inspired a new generation of urban planners who dubbed themselves "Shoupistas."

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Courtesy Max Himmelrich for the Daily Bruin

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You don’t have to look too far in L.A. County to see a “parking benefit district,” as Shoup called it, in action. Parking meters in downtown Pasadena helped revitalize what in the mid to late 20th century was a decaying and neglected part of the city to the busy shopping and entertainment center it is now.

Similar parking policies inspired by Shoup have bolstered other parts of Southern California, like Westwood Village and downtown Ventura, and even abroad, in places like Mexico City.

“It’s a huge, huge issue for a lot of cities and a major potential source of revenue,” said M. Nolan Gray, research director of the nonprofit California YIMBY.

Gray said he first read The High Cost of Free Parking in the mid 2010s. Eventually, as a Ph.D. student at UCLA, Gray became a teaching assistant for Shoup’s graduate-level seminar on parking — a class Shoup continued to teach through his retirement.

Gray said Shoup was the kind of teacher and mentor who encouraged his students to develop essays they wrote for class into full-fledged academic papers or newspaper op-eds.

Shoup engaged in long discussions with Gray, sometimes at The Apple Pan diner on Pico Boulevard, about the future of L.A.

“He was an Angeleno through and through,” Gray said of the Long Beach native. “He believed in the future of the city. He accepted the city on his own terms. It wasn’t this typical relationship that people have with L.A. that’s just pure condemnation and judgement.”

Donald Shoup and M. Nolan Gray, research director at California YIMBY, often had long conversations discussing L.A. infrastructure topics, like parking and zoning.

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Courtesy M. Nolan Gray

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After reading one of his papers in the summer last year, L.A. Councilmember Nithya Raman told LAist she invited Shoup to her office to discuss his ideas to repair the city’s crumbling sidewalks.

Donning a tan-colored hat with the phrase “Parking Matters” printed on it in green, Shoup explained how the city could enforce its own law of requiring property owners to pay for sidewalk repairs when they sell their homes and as a result have some cash to spend.

“He was really, really enthusiastic about engaging with people who wanted to take action, and that was incredible,” Raman said. “Now after his passing, I feel particularly blessed to have had that moment to engage with him.”

The “Shoupista”

Raman considers herself a “Shoupista,” which is what passionate followers of the late urban planner call themselves.

“There are multiple members of my staff who think of themselves as Shoupistas,” Raman said. “His legacy is really long in City Hall right now, and I hope to keep it that way.”

Donald Shoup visited Councilmember Nithya Raman in July 2024 to discuss how to repair L.A.'s sidewalks.

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Courtesy Office of Councilmember Nithya Raman

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Gray, with California YIMBY, described a Shoupista as someone who believes in parking policy that saves people time and doesn’t transform cities into holding spaces for garages and lots.

“I think the genius of his work is that he zeroed in on something that dramatically affects most people’s lives, but that they have thought almost nothing whatsoever about,” Gray said.

It’s uncommon for an academic, especially one focused on such a niche issue, to gain a legion of fans like Shoup did. There’s even a Facebook group for Shoupistas.

Ellen Schwartz, a parking planner at Walker Consultants based in L.A., said she was a member of that group even before becoming Shoup’s student at UCLA in 2019.

Schwartz said she’ll remember how entertaining her late professor was. Schwartz sent LAist some of the cartoons and photos Shoup used to sign off his emails, which Schwartz said added a sprinkle of levity to their conversations.

One cartoon from the December 1975 issue of The New Yorker shows disgruntled folks trying to park along a curb. In front of them is a tree-lined park with people sitting and chatting on benches and kids running around a fountain.

The caption reads, “The city is going to hell! That used to be a parking lot.”