SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Renowned urban planning Professor Donald Shoup died earlier this month. He was an emeritus professor at UCLA, and even if you'd never taken a class with him, you may have experience with a thing he studied - parking.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
That's right. If you have ever driven a car, then you know that feeling of sweet victory when you find the perfect free parking spot, right? Well, that free spot comes with a hidden cost, according to Shoup, who was one of the world's foremost experts in land economics and parking.
DETROW: Shoup's landmark book, "The High Cost Of Free Parking" is some 700 pages, but his humor and accessible writing amassed him a dedicated following among urban planners, government officials and activists. Here he is talking with NPR's Jennifer Ludden in 2005.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DONALD SHOUP: I think that parking is important for all of you - that the average car is parked 95% of the time. And some of your listeners were probably even conceived in a parked car.
(LAUGHTER)
CHANG: Oh. In the book, Shoup argues that free parking causes all kinds of negative effects in urban areas, and the real cost of parking is all around us.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
SHOUP: It's hidden in the prices for everything that we buy, or it's hidden in the price of housing and the price of restaurant meals or merchandise at stores. I think a little bit of everything we pay for is siphoned off to pay for the parking that seems free.
DETROW: The book became a classic in urban planning circles, and his policy ideas have been adopted worldwide. According to the Parking Reform Network, over 3,000 cities around the world have put some of Shoup's proposals into place.
CHANG: But, you know, beyond his ideas, Shoup was a celebrated member of the UCLA community and often biked to campus from his home. Shoup's fans, who call themselves Shoupistas (ph), knew him as UCLA's parking guru and a parking rock star.
DETROW: They called him Shoup Dog, a nickname he happily embraced. He was 86 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF DR DRE SONG, "NUTHIN' BUT A "G" THANG") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
