As a result of the passing of urban planning pioneer and researcher Donald Shoup at the age of 87, there’s been an outpouring of tributes to his work in the field. Though his theory and research was somewhat disputed, Shoup aimed to offer practical research for urban policy from a non-partisan viewpoint that has widely been embraced in nearly 40 years of thought-leadership and scholarly publications. Shoup was most often associated with popularizing the “High-Capacity Transit” plan which aimed to reconsider the narrow focus of overblown plans for metro trains in urban planning at the size of Amsterdam and Tokyo while expanding on a municipal transportation system. Somewhat more recently, he also received credit for popularizing hub-and-spoke analysis, which tracks the efficiency of high-frequency bus services radiating out of city centers. Shoup attended Haverford College and later specialized in Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a doctorate from the school in Mathematics and then studying urban policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. This interdisciplinary work blended to yield an extensive publication history from 1976-2020 and a career associated with research positions at UCLA to various other institutions and think-tanks. As a leader in urban policy analysis and some of the original innovators of the data-oriented movement in urban planning, his name may come up amidst the recent renaissance in fields like land-use allocations frameworks regionally and from top-tier universities. His entire body of work, consisting of several books and research publications, can be found in the affiliates section of his personal landing page.
Starting with a conversation on the shortcomings of public transit in Los Angeles prompted by observed ridership times and benefits versus flat fare systems, Shoup’s interest turned out to cover broad topics in land-use and transportation considerations. As an example, he once posited to cheap parking limits (and its inverse) Transportation and Land Use correlation. Shoup applied a focused research method limited only by the data rather than pre-conceived prejudices within the field. He took a particular interest in monetization and efficient resource allocation in these systems, applying necessity-based principles to yield actions like recommendation to eliminate or limit parking minimums in residential town planning, a policy adopted quite extensively by cities in recent years including Minneapolis. With 59 peer-reviewed publications on that subject alone, he approached this sort of topic systematically and with thorough, evidence-based considerations. Even as a consultant for the Federal Transit Administration, he maintained an independent viewpoint that provided guidance to numerous stops in various cities across the US with methodology extending from introduction in the 1970s all the way through recent books in 2016 and 2017. One particularly timely quote from this work asks a question – “At a time when Established Land Use Policies Are No Longer Sustaining US Cities, Why Do We Still Have No Guidance from Science?” This sentiment is strikingly common when applied to contemporary urban planning challenges and reflects some of Shoup’s disavowals of partisanship in favor of scientific principles applied to contemporary situations. He’s most often been associated with promoting practical, data-driven policy over discussions favoring politics or generous subsidies. In light of recent, highly politically style infrastructure investments like Seattle’s $810 million tunnel construction (a tunnel originally set to cost $175 million before many overruns) or Congress’s sudden overinvestment in Amtrak post-election, this approach could have been beneficial to avoid such edifice complexes and really appreciate urban policy guidance almost 50 years in the making against his contemporaries. His passing represents a loss for the field regardless.
Beyond providing these theoretical frameworks for ballasting policy, Shoup was equally instrumental in his approach to publishing his results and sharing them widely. He’s provided teaching materials to a host of universities, and given a considerable quantity of talks (over 50) on this subject at conferences ranging in scope from Stockholm to Rio de Janeiro. One of his most influential papers, “The High Cost of Free Parking,” published in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 1994 (among several others with that outlet) led to over 800 citations and dozens of follow-up investigations, making his “parking minimum” framework concept a cornerstone of contemporary urban policy discussions in every field from housing to transportation. He contributed as a consultant and author to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, while maintaining research appointments at universities like UCLA, USC, and others.
In the immediate wake of his passing from brain cancer, reviewers have struggled to specify the lasting impact of his work on the field; though he’s published several books, elaborate research publications, and compiled a research bibliography of such extensive detail that it’s nearly 50 pages long, Shoup’s approach to arriving at these tangible solutions to practical urban problems nearly single-handedly became a defining cornerstone of modern US urban policy research discussions. Even in his absence, it’s likely that his approach to concise, careful analysis balanced against policy prescriptions will continue to influence urban planning discussions in the US going forward.
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Over the course of his almost 40-year career, Don Shoup helped to cement practical and data-driven policy over discussions favoring politics or generous subsidies, becoming an influential figure advocating for high-capacity transit, hub-and-spoke analysis, and parking minimums. He published hundreds of papers, textbooks and research publications, and heavily influenced urban policy discussions in every field from housing to transportation. His ideas have been adopted extensively, with implementation even spanning to residential town planning as cities dropped parking minimums in recent years associated with research positions at UCLA to various other institutions and think-tanks. As a leader in urban policy analysis and some of the original innovators of the data-oriented movement in urban planning, his name may come up amidst the recent renaissance in fields like land-use allocations frameworks regionally and from top-tier universities. His entire body of work, consisting of several books and research publications, can be found in the affiliates section of his personal landing page. In the wake of his passing from brain cancer at the age of 87, reviewers have struggled to specify the lasting impact of his work on the field. Though he’s published several books, elaborate research publications, and compiled a research bibliography of such extensive detail that it’s nearly 50 pages long, Shoup’s approach to arriving at these practical solutions to urban problems nearly single-handedly became a defining cornerstone of modern US urban policy research discussions. His influence on the field will certainly be missed long after his passing.
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