Book Review: The Shoup Doctrine

This is a guest post by Transport Advisor and Town Planner George Weeks, reviewing The Shoup Doctrine, a collection of 33 essays written in celebration of the career of Donald Shoup and parking reforms. It is written in his personal capacity.

This review was originally published in issue 186 of Roundabout, the magazine of the Transportation Group NZ in December 2025.

You can check out past book review posts here.

Book review: The Shoup Doctrine: Essays celebrating Donald Shoup and Parking Reforms (Routeledge, 2025)

The Shoup Doctrine provides 33 perspectives on how to manage car parking for a liveable city, all consistent with the work of the late Professor Donald Shoup.

Urbanists have many heroes and heroines. Typically the person on the pedestal is articulate, observant and imaginative, telling stories that give us the sense of a better city. Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs and Janette Sadik-Khan, to start with the J’s, are all sought out. They tell stories and we think: “Wow, we could do this too.” The Shoup Doctrine tells 33 such stories.

Professor Donald Shoup was a Titan of transport. His fame came from academic expertise in that seemingly-humdrum topic: Car parking. His enormous tome The High Cost of Free Parking unpicked the well-meaning-but-disastrous nature of cities that seek to provide an endless supply of free parking spots. Packed with 750 pages of empirical analysis, examples and lessons, there were three main principles:

Cities should:

1. Remove minimum parking requirements.
2. Charge for kerbside car parking where demand exceeds supply
3. Invest parking revenues to improve public realm on metered streets

The High Cost of Free Parking resonated around the world, spawning legions of fans (“Shoupistas”)and a suitably punny website: ShoupDogg. It also led to the Parking Reform Network and the removal of car parking minima in New Zealand in 2022.

Shoup’s death in February 2025 coincided with the completion of a festschrift in his honour. This book, The Shoup Doctrine contains 33 essays from colleagues, pupils, protégés and fans, plus tributes from experts like Ed Glaeser. All were reviewed by the man himself.

The Shoup Doctrine is in six unequal-sized parts. After an introduction (by Shoup himself), we learn in Part II about his academic life. What prompted this electrical engineer to investigate car parking policies?

Part III covers the theories of parking reform, covering variously urban design, economics, transport planning and kerbside management. Jeff Speck’s In Praise of On-Street Parking explains how parked cars can provide a buffer between moving traffic and people walking or cycling. Road diets should remove traffic lanes over parking spaces.

Part IV, covering challenges and successes is (perhaps understandably) the longest – 11 essays putting the previous part’s theories into practice. These all come from the USA, the original home of car culture and parking minima.

Part V takes us to Switzerland, China, Australia and – yes – New Zealand! Scott Ebbett and Malcolm McCracken tell the story of Shoup’s 2010 visit, where international evidence and local experience combined to build cross-party support for removing parking minima in Aotearoa.

Part VI concludes with a future: A Golden Age of Parking Management. Fundamentally, car parking isn’t simple. It is neither a “human right”, nor reductible to “storage of personal possessions in public places.” It’s more complex and more important than this. Parking deserves empirical scrutiny, not reductive simplification.

Donald Shoup taught us to manage car parking in the context of the cities that we want. His receipt of the 2023 Seaside Prize™ for “…individuals who have made significant contributions to the fields of architecture, urban planning, and community development” shows the importance of car parking reform for liveable cities.

Each of these 33 essays provides a complementary perspective on Shoup’s basic premise: Minimum car parking requirements make most urban developments illegal and/or financially unfeasible, while entrenching car dependency. This is not a matter of opinion; Shoup was an academic. He taught us to look for the empirical evidence and understand the data. Books by David Mepham and Henry Grabar have developed this approach further.

New Zealand’s high rates of car ownership, driving and urbanisation make Shoup’s principles more relevant than ever. We may have abolished car parking minima, but kerbside parking management is still in its infancy. We’re keen on park-and-ride, but hesitant to charge for it. And so on.

With its thematic, essay-based approach, The Shoup Doctrine is relevant to all people. This erudite relevance is the key to its success as a tribute and a textbook; it deserves to be widely read. If you’re reading this review, it’s relevant to you. Get hold of a copy.

There is a Native American saying that a person dies twice. Once when they stop breathing, and again when their name is spoken for the last time. Donald Shoup deserves to be remembered for ever and his mana will endure through this excellent book.

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