Remembering Donald Shoup (1938-2025)
Professor Donald Shoup passed away on February 6, 2025. Among many other significant achievements and honors he was a founding Advisory Board member of PRN.
Donald’s curiosity, intelligence, passion, generosity, and kindness allowed him not only to expose the critical problems with modern parking policy, but also to ignite and nurture a movement to change them and make the world a better place.
The Parking Reform Network wishes to provide our community with a place to share their stories and thoughts to remember and honor Donald.
Professor Shoup was a donor, member, and booster of PRN’s work. If you are so moved, you can honor his legacy and support the parking reform movement with a memorial donation.
I was Don's editor for both his books. I want you to imagine what it took for me to persuade APA to publish the 800-page manuscript (no graphics yet) on parking, manuscript that was critical of past planning practice to turn it into The High Cost of Free Parking. But Don's brilliance, humor, and amazing research told me I had to do it, and Sylvia Lewis, who was the publisher of Planners Press at the time, backed my decision to go forward. I also knew no other publisher would take on work that resulted in an 800-page book. This was simply far too important a work on a number of levels to end up being left out of the planning canon.
Don was an absolute pleasure to work with, as many, many have attested to in the tributes I've read. What he did, I think, is start a revolution in parking science, and as Thomas Kuhn noted, the structure of such revolutions involves, first, breaking down rigid norms that have now been exposed to be seriously flawed, and, second, doing the work of convincing the practitioners of the science to see their job in a new way.
I cried on Thursday. Those years working with him and being with him at the conferences were just a lot of fun. His wife would sit with me when he was speaking. She was very grateful to APA for getting Don's work out into the world. Among my accomplishments as an editor, this is at the top, and I have Don to thank for it. RIP.
Don was an absolute pleasure to work with, as many, many have attested to in the tributes I've read. What he did, I think, is start a revolution in parking science, and as Thomas Kuhn noted, the structure of such revolutions involves, first, breaking down rigid norms that have now been exposed to be seriously flawed, and, second, doing the work of convincing the practitioners of the science to see their job in a new way.
I cried on Thursday. Those years working with him and being with him at the conferences were just a lot of fun. His wife would sit with me when he was speaking. She was very grateful to APA for getting Don's work out into the world. Among my accomplishments as an editor, this is at the top, and I have Don to thank for it. RIP.