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.
After stumbling upon an absolutely riveting podcast interview with Donald Shoup about 15 years ago, the scales fell from my eyes and I immediately converted to the science of Shoupism.
It is, however, entirely coincidental that my husband Rich and I happened to own for 25 years a 77-stall 2/3-acre surface parking in close-in Portland, Oregon. Our Paramount Parking has now become the nearly-completed Albina One - the inaugural 94-unit residential development project of Albina Vision, the largest restorative justice project in the nation. https://www.albinavisioninc.com/housing
Donald Shoup emailed me, "Congratulations! Less parking is more housing!" What an honor.
- I share this here so we can all rejoice in tangible progress on the ground.
- As a postscript, I will add, that we had earlier corresponded briefly with Donald Shoup about observations we made visiting Anchorage for the first time, and seeing so much downtown land taken up with parking garages and surface lots. He, not knowing where in the world I was emailing him from, referred me to our very own Tony Jordan. I felt proud to reply to him that Tony has long been our friend and neighbor here in Portland. We have watched Tony hang in there in the early years, and have admired so much how he sacrificed personally to help promote Donald Shoup's vision of parking reform.
So we raise our glasses to the past, and to the future, of people-over-parking. The legacy lives on.
Rich and Betsy Reese
It is, however, entirely coincidental that my husband Rich and I happened to own for 25 years a 77-stall 2/3-acre surface parking in close-in Portland, Oregon. Our Paramount Parking has now become the nearly-completed Albina One - the inaugural 94-unit residential development project of Albina Vision, the largest restorative justice project in the nation. https://www.albinavisioninc.com/housing
Donald Shoup emailed me, "Congratulations! Less parking is more housing!" What an honor.
- I share this here so we can all rejoice in tangible progress on the ground.
- As a postscript, I will add, that we had earlier corresponded briefly with Donald Shoup about observations we made visiting Anchorage for the first time, and seeing so much downtown land taken up with parking garages and surface lots. He, not knowing where in the world I was emailing him from, referred me to our very own Tony Jordan. I felt proud to reply to him that Tony has long been our friend and neighbor here in Portland. We have watched Tony hang in there in the early years, and have admired so much how he sacrificed personally to help promote Donald Shoup's vision of parking reform.
So we raise our glasses to the past, and to the future, of people-over-parking. The legacy lives on.
Rich and Betsy Reese