Remembering Donald Shoup, the Father of Parking Reform
Also today: The French architect who rebuilt Marseille, and squatters stand their ground amid Amsterdam’s housing crisis.
Donald Shoup
Photographer: Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times/Getty
Few scholars have owned a topic the way that Donald Shoup owned parking. The economist and urban planner, who died last week at 86, turned his interest in what he described as a low-prestige branch of land economics — municipal parking policy — into an improbable brand of academic superstardom. He was dubbed the “Sir Isaac Newton of parking” and commanded thousands of fans who called themselves Shoupistas.
“By no means am I the smartest urban planner, but I had the luck to look at something people had neglected and now agree is very important” Shoup, who taught at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, told CityLab’s Laura Bliss in 2018.