The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald C. Shoup

Urban planners try to make them appear scientific (4 parking spots per 1000 feet of commercial space, 1.5 per dentist chair), just as bloodletting proponents made bloodletting appear to be a highly precise science (Shoup’s book is filled with wonderful metaphors - see below).

Namely, parking minimums have literally flooded the world with far too much parking. That solved one problem, as Shoup said, but created many, many others. Parking minimums were cities’ way to ensure that there were enough parking spaces for people to park in. While parking meters have become popular in the densest part of in America’s biggest towns and cities, parking minimums became much, much more prevalent, affecting nearly all new developments nationwide. A few different approaches were tried to solve this problem - parking meters and off-street parking minimums. As cars started becoming popular in the early part of the 20th century, the most desirable part of cities quickly became filled with cars, and not enough parking spaces. To form the context of the storyline, Shoup lays out the evolution of the two places people park: On-street and off-street. Shoup’s treatise carves the arc of parking policy in the United States and abroad. And while we highly recommend it everyone, to help educate the public on parking and how much better it could work, our founder Evan Goldin has summarized the book and, with Professor's Shoup permission, published a summary of the most vital parts of his magnum opus.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald C. Shoup