Books

What would a comprehensive parking reform bookshelf look like? If your local independent bookstore had a “Parking Reform” section, what would it contain? I’ll share what I’ve got and what I know about, and we’ll crowdsource a comprehensive list of books about parking.

I have four books which are specifically about parking: Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking and Parking And The City, Eran Ben-Joseph’s Rethinking A Lot, and Bridget Brown’s book for children Spot’s Parking Lot. I recommend all of them.

I have a few other books in which parking plays a role, Janette Sadik-Kahn’s Streetfight, Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit, and Randy Shaw’s Generation Priced Out. I have Jeff Speck’s Walkable City on audio-book.

I’ve read through Cal Poly Pomona Professor Richard Willson’s books Parking Reform Made Easy (arguably the best title of all) and Parking Management for Smart Growth, they’re more technical in nature, but great books.

There’s a book that looks amazing: Parking: An International Perspective which came out in November 2019. I think a truly complete parking bookshelf would have a copy.

There are a few books I know of which focus on the design of garages. I spied a copy of The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form by Shannon S. McDonald on Professor Shoup’s shelf. The Architecture of Parking by Simon Henley is another one.

Of course, there are the real heavy tomes of ITE’s Trip and Parking Generation, various editions and supplements, but I think Professor Shoup presents most of the information a reformer would need from these resources.

Links to learn more about these books, and others are below. The Parking Reform Network has a “bookshop” set up at Bookshop.org where you can purchase several of these books and our organization will receive 10% of the sale price. You can find our bookshop here.

What did I miss? Let me know in the comments.

The Parking Book List

(Updated 12/19/2021)
Parking Reform and Policy

• The High Cost of Free Parking – Donald Shoup
• Parking and The City – Edited by Donald Shoup
• Parking: An International Perspective
• Parking Reform Made Easy – Richard Willson
• Parking Management for Smart Growth – Richard Willson
• Trip and Parking Generation Manuals – ITE
• A Guide to Parking – IPI
• Lots of Parking – John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle
• Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities – Will Toor and Spencer W. Havlick
• Parking Management Best Practices – Todd Litman
• Parking Policy in Asian Cities – Paul Barter

Parking Design, Architecture, and Culture

• Spot’s Parking Lot (children’s book) – Bridget C. Brown
• The Architecture of Parking – Simon Henley
• Rethinking a Lot – Eran Ben-Joseph
• The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form – Shannon S. McDonald
• Carchitecture: When the Car and the City Collide – Jonathan Bell
• Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges – June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones
• The Quirky World of Parking – Larry Cohen

The books above are those that specifically focus on parking. For other city-building books, there are so many to cover that we couldn’t do them justice. Others have already made those lists, including those specifically by women, anti-racist urbanist books, urbanist books by authors of color, and your annual book list from Planetizen.

This final group of books are not entirely about parking, but do make strong reference to the impact of parking on the built environment.

Urbanism, Housing, Transportation, Transit, and more.

• Walkable City – Jeff Speck
• Walkable City Rules – Jeff Speck
• Streetfight – Janette Sadik-Kahn
• Human Transit – Jarrett Walker
• Generation Priced Out – Randy Shaw
• Sustainable Transportation Planning – Edited by Jeffrey Tumlin
• The Car and the City – Alan Durning
• Increments of Neighborhood -Brian O’Looney
• Reflective Planning Practice: Theory, Cases, and Methods – Richard Willson
• New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies – Todd Litman

Hi. Bridget Brown, here, author of Spot’s Parking Lot, a children’s picture book wherein a terrier considers alternative uses for parking spaces (preview available here).

It’s a little weird to be writing this in the midst of a pandemic, when the concept of how much space people need is so much on our minds as we try to minimize spread of the virus.

Flipping through “Spot,” for example, there are some edits that should be made for safety. About halfway through, there are 20 people doing yoga in a parking spot, and on the next page 5 people dancing in one. For adequate social/physical distancing, the yogis would probably need at least 3 or 4 spaces (and masks if they were indoors), and the dancers might as well. 
Farther on, though there are only two people in the bus shelter, they should probably be giving each other a little more space on the bench and also masking up. 

The cafe table spacing, on the other hand, almost works, though maybe only two rather than three to a spot. And this set-up is one that we’re seeing more often in the wild these days than usual. As long as they’re not parked on with cars or trucks, these big spaces offer an opportunity to help people spread out. And maybe some of their re-uses will become permanent.

At any rate, I’ve donated copies of the book to the Parking Reform Network for new members who can use them (while supplies last): parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, caregivers. Current members can enter a drawing for a copy when they fill out the membership survey.

Hopefully the pandemic will pass before too awfully long and we’ll be able to gather closer again. I look forward to the day, for instance, when 20-some 2nd graders can sit together cross-legged again for story time in just one space. 

Following is a  “Spot activity” to try.

Materials

• Open floor or ground space
• Measuring tape
• Masking tape
• A copy of Spot’s Parking Lot
• Print-outs of empty spots or lots (or draw your own if you don’t have a printer)

Instructions

1. Measure out 8-1/2 by 19 feet and apply masking tape on 3 sides of the area to represent a parking space (this can pair well with a lesson plan on inches, feet, and yards).
2. Measure a safe distance for kids to sit within the area, depending on circumstances.
3. Story time!
4. Have kids draw out their own ideas of what to put in a space, or even a lot.
5. If you’d like, submit photos of your favorite drawings to be added to an online gallery.