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What it argues
The High Cost of Free Parking is Donald Shoup's comprehensive argument that parking minimums—the rules requiring developers to provide a set number of parking spaces per building—are among the most damaging and least examined policies in American cities. Shoup, an urban planning professor at UCLA, spent decades studying parking economics before assembling this book, and his thesis is simple if counterintuitive: free parking isn't free. Someone always pays. The question is who, how inefficiently, and at what cost to cities.
The book makes its case on three interlocking fronts. First, minimum parking requirements are derived from engineering studies that predict demand for free parking, which is not the same as actual demand when parking has a market price. Cities use these faulty numbers to mandate more parking than the market would produce, turning vast amounts of land into asphalt. Second, the cost of that parking is bundled invisibly into housing, office rents, and consumer goods. People who don't own cars subsidize those who do. Third, cruising for underpriced curb parking generates significant traffic congestion—Shoup's studies found that cruising for parking in a single Los Angeles block produced traffic equivalent to 30,000 vehicle miles annually.
What it gets right
- 1.
Minimum parking requirements are based on studies of demand for free parking, not market demand. They systematically overproduce parking at the expense of other land uses.
- 2.
The real cost of parking is hidden in housing prices, office rents, and consumer goods. Someone always pays; it's just rarely the driver, at the time of parking.
- 3.
Cruising for cheap or free curb parking generates enormous traffic congestion. One underpriced block can generate as much traffic as thousands of additional vehicle miles.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has spent most of his career studying the economics of parking, land use, and transportation policy, publishing extensively in academic journals before releasing The High Cost of Free Parking in 2005 and an updated edition in 2011. His work has directly influenced parking reform in cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. He is the rare academic whose technical research has translated into measurable changes in municipal policy. He is also the informal leader of a loose community of parking reformers who call themselves Shoupistas.
