Synopses & Reviews
American drivers park free for 99 percent of their automobile trips. Cities require developers to provide ample off-street parking for every new building. The cost? Sprawl that makes cities more fit for cars than people, and a nationwide fleet of motor vehicles that consumes one-eighth of the world's total oil production. Cities would be in much better shape if planners regulated the quality, rather than the quantity, of parking spaces. Donald Shoup contends that parking is seriously misunderstood and mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians alike. He takes an economist's approach to the problem and proposes reforms that--by making better use of markets--would greatly improve transportation, urban design, the economy, and the environment.
Synopsis
Off-street parking requirements are devastating American cities. So says the author in this no-holds-barred treatise on the way parking should be. Free parking, the author argues, has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion, but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. The author proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking, namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking.
Synopsis
American drivers park for free on nearly ninety-nine percent of their car trips, and cities require developers to provide ample off-street parking for every new building. The resulting cost? Today we see sprawling cities that are better suited to cars than people and a nationwide fleet of motor vehicles that consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. Donald Shoup contends in
The High Cost of Free Parking that parking is sorely misunderstood and mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians. He proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking so that Americans can stop paying for free parking's hidden costs.
About the Author
Donald C. Shoup, AICP, is the chair of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds a doctorate in economics from Yale University. From 1996 to 2001, Shoup directed the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. He is the author of numerous articles on parking, including "Buying Time at the Curb" in The Half-Life of Policy Rationales: How New Technology Affects Old Policy Issues and "Unlimited Access" in the journal
Transportation.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 1. The Twenty-First Century Parking Problem
Part I: Planning for Free Parking2. Unnatural Selection3. The Pseudoscience of Planning for Parking4. An Analogy: Ancient Astronomy5. A Great Planning Disaster6. The Cost of Required Parking Spaces7. Putting the Cost of Free Parking in Perspective8. An Allegory: Minimum Telephone Requirements9. Public Parking in Lieu of Private Parking10. Reduce Demand Rather than Increase Supply
Part II: Cruising for Parking11. Cruising12. The Right Price for Curb Parking13. Choosing to Cruise14. California Cruising
Part III:
Cashing in on Curb Parking15. Buying Time at the Curb16. Turning Small Change into Big Changes17. Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad18. Let Prices Do the Planning19. The Ideal Source of Local Public Revenue20. Unbundled Parking21. Time for a Paradigm Shift
Part IV: Conclusion22. Changing the Future Appendix A: The Practice of Parking RequirementsAppendix B: Nationwide Transportation SurveysAppendix C: The Language of ParkingAppendix D: The Calculus of Driving, Parking, and WalkingAppendix E: The Price of Land and the Cost of ParkingAppendix F: People, Parking, and CitiesAppendix G: Converting Traffic Congestion into CashAppendix H: The Vehicles of Nations ReferencesIndexTablesFigures