Donald Shoup, a distinguished professor emeritus whose parking reform ideas inspired generations of students and urban planners, died Feb. 6. He was 86.

Shoup, who taught in the urban planning department at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, researched the hidden costs of free parking in cities and spent his career advocating to remove mandatory off-street parking requirements. He also campaigned to set higher prices for on-street parking in order to reinvest the money into public services, said Patrick Siegman, a transportation planner, economist and the owner of consulting firm Siegman & Associates.

“The High Cost of Free Parking,” Shoup’s renowned book on parking reform and culmination of decades of research, was published in 2005 and later revised in 2011. Its publication went on to be named one of the key events in American city planning history by the American Planning Association in 2018.

“If you go to Trader Joe’s or to the grocery store, and you go and you park, most of the land on the side of the grocery store is devoted to parking, and a smaller share is devoted to the actual store,” said Brian Taylor, professor of urban planning and public policy and a former student of Shoup’s. “But if you walk to that store, you bike to that store, you take the bus – everything you buy at that store has the cost of that parking capitalized into the goods that you buy.”

Mandatory minimum parking requirements often limit different kinds of development within cities and make it more expensive, said Daniel Hess, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo and a former student of Shoup’s.

Cities that remove parking requirements often become more walkable and are revitalized when space is not devoted to parking spots, he added.

In 2017, Buffalo, New York, became the first U.S. city of its size to eliminate off-street parking minimums citywide, due in part to Shoup visiting as a scholar years before, Hess said. According to the LA Times, California – inspired by Shoup’s research – eliminated minimum parking requirements for most developments near mass transit.

[Related: Bruin to Bruin: Donald Shoup]

Pat Shoup, Donald’s wife of over 59 years who worked as a literary editor, said she and her husband bonded together over a shared love of writing. She said she took joy in editing the work of her husband, who was always open to criticism and wanted his work to be widely understood.

Donald’s achievements of implementing policies around parking on a practical level were an immense point of pride for her, Pat Shoup said. Beyond his influence on policy, Pat said that she and Donald were proud of his students – many of whom went on to be successful urban planners.

“It just makes you realize there are so many good people in the world, and you appreciate tremendously being included often in knowing them,” she said.

Together, the Shoups began the Donald and Pat Shoup Fellowship in 2015 in an effort to reduce tuition for graduate urban planning students at UCLA.

Inspired by Donald, Hess began working on a book honoring him, composed of both personal and professional tributes to him and his research, Hess said, adding that Donald read and edited all the chapters in the book, in addition to writing two chapters himself.

The manuscript of the book was delivered to the publisher one week before Donald died and is set to be published this year, Hess added.

Taylor said Donald’s passion for parking was apparent when he tried to talk to him about attending a UCLA men’s basketball game at the Intuit Dome in December, but Donald quickly told Taylor to contact the venue about improving its parking and transit policies.

“He could find a parking connection to almost anything,” he said.

Donald was able to see how parking reform could result in many citywide and quality of life improvements – often saying that cars are parked for 98% of the time but most people only study the other 2%, said Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning and a former student of Donald’s.

“He was an evangelist for parking,” he said.

More than a renowned and celebrated scholar, Donald was also a deeply kind, generous and humorous person, Hess said. Once at an academic conference, Hess recalled when Donald introduced him as a “colleague” to a group of people even though he was still his student.

“Here was one of the greats in our discipline just elevating me to the rank of colleague,” he said. “It was actually quite touching. And then, now that I’m a professor, I think of ways where I could pass that along.”

Taylor said Donald was able to communicate his ideas comedically, remembering that when he initially took the latter’s class, he likened it to a stand-up comedy routine. He also prioritized what was important rather than following academic trends, added Michael Manville, professor and chair of the urban planning department.

“What I took from Don – much more than the subject matter – was his approach of doing things,” Manville said. “It’s the nature of academia that there’s a fair amount of groupthink and herd mentality, and I do think Don spent most of his very long career almost completely immune to that.”

Manville added that he thinks Donald’s death will not fully hit him until he reads something interesting in the future and realizes he can no longer share it with Donald.

Siegman was inspired to pursue the work of parking reform after coming across Donald’s work early on in his academic life, he said. Siegman added that he believes meaningful reform is only possible once parking is improved.

Siegman claims himself to be the first “Shoupista,” a passionate follower of Donald. Donald also embraced the name and adapted the moniker “Shoup Dogg.”

Donald, who was an electrical engineer before he became an urban planner, met his wife after working with her brother at an engineering company in northern England as an exchange student, Pat said. Donald later stayed at her parent’s house in Northern Ireland, where she said her whole family fell in love with him.

“He was just so interested in everything, and he had a great sense of humor, and he was always willing to help with anything he could,” she said. “And he was very generous.”

Donald, who retired from full-time teaching at UCLA in 2015 after 41 years, was so passionate that he was set to teach his course on parking in the spring 2025 quarter, Taylor said. Donald also became committed to improving the quality of urban sidewalks later in his career, Taylor added.

[Related: UCLA urban planning professor to retire after 41 years of teaching]

Beyond parking reform, Pat Shoup said that her husband was a capable electrician and an avid gardener, tending their garden with pruning shears while thinking through whatever he was currently writing. The couple loved to bike together, and Donald also had a phase of refinishing furniture when they lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she added.

“Everything he did, he did well because he would research exactly how to do it and what he should be doing,” Pat said.