The Shoup Doctrine

What happens when cities eliminate parking requirements? When curbside parking is priced at market rates? When parking revenue stays in the neighborhood instead of disappearing into general funds? These questions form the core of Donald Shoup's revolutionary approach to urban parking policy, explored in depth through Daniel Baldwin Hess's new book "The Shoup Doctrine."

Bringing together 37 contributors across 33 chapters, this festschrift celebrates the man who transformed parking from a mundane topic into one of urban planning's most dynamic areas of reform. As Hess explains, Shoup's background as an economist led him to view every parking instance as an economic transaction with hidden costs that profoundly shape our cities.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • Sandrush: The Rival of the Beach in 20th Century Los Angeles by Elsa Devienne
• Get a copy of the book from the publisher: https://www.routledge.com/The-Shoup-Doctrine-Essays-Celebrating-Donald-Shoup-and-Parking-Reforms/Hess/p/book/9781032733920?srsltid=AfmBOor_oOVeYjVfiRDJhUR961ekHH5bzYi6Ug7GvS1gf_6n8CFpvqwE 
• Check out our episode where we interviewed Donald Shoup on The High Cost of Free Parking back in year 1: https://www.bookedonplanning.com/podcast/episode/79419c03/the-high-cost-of-free-parking 
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/ 

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Transcript

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Introduction to Booked on Planning

Stephanie Rouse 0:12

you're listening to the booked on planning podcast , a project of the nebraska chapter of the american planning association . In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing , transportation and everything in between . Join us as we get Booked on Planning . Welcome back , Bookworms , to another episode of Booked on Planning . In this episode we talk with author Daniel Baldwin Hess on his book the Shoop Doctrine Essay Celebrating Donald Shoop and Parking Reforms . This book is a compilation of essays from over three dozen authors around the topic of Donald Shoop's life's work parking reform . The book , edited by Shoop himself , was meant as a compilation of the field of parking reform today , but also is a great celebration of his impact on the field .

Jennifer Hiatt 1:08

I have to admit , if you had asked me in graduate school how much I would think about parking in my career , I really would not have believed you . But I'm actually certain being a Shoopista sealed my job offer . I

The Shoup Doctrine Book Overview

Jennifer Hiatt 1:14

listened to our season one episode with Donald Shoop before the interview , since I knew our urban development department oversaw parking , so Shoop's influence in planning and parking is so widespread . I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't been impacted by his work at this point .

Stephanie Rouse 1:27

That's actually a topic we get into with Daniel during the episode . So many planners graduate with little or no training in parking , despite it having an outsized impact on community development and function . He has some good insights into changing this in the future and with so much recent momentum around parking , I can see the change on the horizon .

Jennifer Hiatt 1:46

I sure hope so . It hopefully , as the conversation around parking grows , it makes it to elected officials and we can advance Shoop's policy and make our communities better . So let's get into our conversation with author Daniel Baldwin Hess on his book the Shoop Doctrine Essays Celebrating Donald Shoop and Parking Reform .

Stephanie Rouse 2:04

Daniel , thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book , the Shoup Doctrine , a compilation of essays , many of them by Shoup's former students , including yourself , but Shoup is actually pretty involved in the editing of this as well . Can you talk about the idea behind this book and the process to get it to publication ?

Creating a Festschrift for Donald Shoup

Daniel Baldwin Hess 2:22

This book had been on my mind for some time and then I finally cleared time to work on it when my sabbatical was approaching . This was about two years ago and it was on my mind because Donald Shoup's research was well known to me . But then I thought and I saw that he was really having a moment , as they say , and as I traveled around and met different planners and went to conferences people would say to me hey , didn't you work with Donald Shoup when you were a student ? Wow , his research is really having an impact these days . So that's what I would hear from my colleagues . So it made me really latch on to this idea of Donald Shoup's impact on our profession . So there was sort of this recognition that no other urban planning academic was really getting their work out there like he was for wide consumption and having an impact on practice .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 3:12

So I took a trip to Los Angeles and I visited Donald at his home . He was at that point , of course , in retirement from his position as professor of urban planning at UCLA , and I explained my aim with a book to celebrate him , who many consider the world's foremost urban planning researcher of parking , and he liked the idea about a work that furthered parking research . But he wasn't too excited about a book that celebrated him . He was too modest for that . But I pressed on anyway . I told him about my vision for the book and he and I began to list some scholars who I could invite to contribute .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 3:50

I devised a work plan and I got started and he eventually came around to the idea that the book would also be a tribute to him , and so I'm introducing this book to you as a festschrift so that's the German word for a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 4:08

Festschrift actually means feast of writing if we translate it literally . And so , yes , the chapters were written by the contributing authors , and Donald Shoup loved editing . He loved editing his own writing and other people's writing . So I did invite him to edit the chapters . So he read and commented on the chapters , so the people who have contributed to the book got some feedback from our top scholar and he really loved the process . Now the book really assembles a distinguished group of planning academics and practitioners and advocates to examine all of Shoup's scholarly contributions and then really where we are in the world of parking reform and research about parking today . So there are 33 chapters written by 37 contributing authors and , as you pointed out , 10 of these authors , including me , are Donald Shoup's former students of urban planning at UCLA .

Jennifer Hiatt 5:07

And , of course , we did lose Donald Shoup at the beginning of this year , and you have a beautiful memoriam to him at the start of the book . How did his passing actually really impact the legacy of this book for you

Shoup's Impact on Academia and Practice

Jennifer Hiatt 5:19

, the last thing that he was probably really able to work on ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 5:22

Donald Shoup passed away in February of this year at age 86 .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 5:27

He was healthy and active and engaged up until a very short illness .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 5:31

As I mentioned , we had been working closely as I sought his advice on editing the book and looking at the chapters that the author submitted , and he told me the book brought him much joy . So that is an important impact of the book for me personally . Looking a little bit wider beyond that , though , my hopes for the book are that it extends and enriches Shoup's research about parking policies and parking reform , that a reader gets to know a little bit about Donald Shoup as a better way of understanding his research , and that we get to learn more on-the-ground impacts of research about parking how Shoup was inspired practitioners to undertake specific parking reforms . How he energized a group of followers who came to call themselves the Shoupistas and are very active advocates around the country . How he sparked a movement in planning reform . He gave us some really good tools to carry forward . And with every success in parking reform we can see how new approaches to parking can help make cities more livable , more sustainable and more just . So we can actually see that on the ground with our eyes .

Stephanie Rouse 6:42

And on the lines of sparking influence with practitioners . One of the articles said that Shoop could be seen as this ivory tower Brahmin type , but in actuality he really had a really good influence in the practicing field as well as the academic field and was a very approachable person . A lot of the articles referenced how he was really had a good sense of humor and was engaging with his presentations . How do you think Shoup was able to accomplish this crossover between being influential in both the academic as well as the practicing field ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 7:13

Yeah , Well , donald Shoup did wear tweed suit jackets and he spoke like a professor and he published prolifically . So I see the ivory tower Brahmin reference fits . But I think translating his research into practical uses for practitioners and the profession was really in his DNA . He talked to everyone and anyone about parking , for example at parties and at social events . When he would meet people he would usually ask the question where did you park ? Now , remember this was many events in LA where I saw this happen . So this would lead to a conversation about people's personal experiences with parking . But then Donald would try to shift that conversation into a wider discussion about parking policies . He was always hoping to make a convert and help educate someone about how distorted parking policies and parking prices are hurting US cities . So he was really not afraid to connect with people residents , activists , advocates and also he knew that he must connect with people in order to disseminate information about his recommended reforms .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 8:23

After the publication of his book the High Cost of Free Parking this was in about 2005 , he received many written messages from people all over the country Community advocates or practicing planners or architects or real estate developers . They would read the book and then they wanted to share with him a story or ask a question , and this is what always amazed me . He answered everyone . And I meet people now and they say I read the book . And I looked up his email address and I wrote him a message and I got a response . It's this continual energy for connection You've mentioned in the question . He was funny . So he was funny and witty and approached it all in a very lighthearted way . But really , when we drill down though , he was ahead of his time in exploring our parking systems . Really , even before the words like sustainability and equity and justice were really part of the discourse of planning and urbanism , and then I think the world finally caught up to him in recognizing that we need to do something about excessive automobility in our cities .

Stephanie Rouse 9:27

You know you mentioned how he was more than willing to talk with anyone and everyone in our first year of our podcast . I found his email somehow and reached out to him to see if he would be willing to talk about his book , which would have been 20 years old or 15 years old by that point and you know a lot of authors are like , no , I'm going to be on that and he was more than happy to come on and talk about his book in our fledgling year of the podcast .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 9:51

That's excellent . That's excellent . It does not surprise me . That was his way of connecting .

Robin Hood Parking Explained

Jennifer Hiatt 9:59

In one of my favorite articles . Doreena Pujani describes the concept of Robin Hood parking in her article . I had never heard of this term , so can you give our listeners an overview of it ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 10:08

I like this term too when it came up . Okay so the Robin Hood concept of taking from the rich and giving to the poor really refers to the redistribution of wealth , so taking resources typically money or land from wealthy individuals or institutions and then reallocating them to those who are less fortunate . Okay so our contributing author here this is Doreena Pojani , and she is now working in Australia , and when she was a doctoral student she did one study year at UCLA . So she also worked under Donald Shoup and had the good fortune to get to know him . What she tells us in the chapter in the book that you're referring to is that some cities are rich in their parking supply but poor in their space for micromobility .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 10:55

Micromobility I mean lanes for bicycles , scooters and walking .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 11:00

So we can take parking lanes or curbside parking or other examples of parking in cities where it appears , and then reallocate this space to what we have less of lanes for non-motorized travel biking , scootering , walking .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 11:15

So this is never as easy as I just described it , since any time that we take something away from citizens curb parking spaces in this case there will be a political struggle , but really I think it's the job of city planners to explain to people and increase public acceptability that while one element of the urban transportation system might be reduced , other elements will be added or increased and this makes the entire system work better for everyone .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 11:42

And Doreena points out the excellent micro-mobility planning that we see in the Netherlands and Northern Europe and other parts of Europe that can really give us a vision of her idea of Robin Hood planning and reducing parking to increase other types of transportation modes , especially non-motorized . But also , I would say there are some examples in the USA , so especially the reconception of street space that happened in New York City about 15 years ago , led by Janet Sadek Khan , that took travel and parking lanes out of operating street space and they were made into pedestrian space , parklets , places with cafe tables and so forth . That became so popular among New Yorkers and visitors as a way to enjoy the city .

Stephanie Rouse 12:27

Yeah , we had a project here recently . It was just completed earlier this spring , I believe . It was a bike lane project on one of our streets that leads right into downtown , and when we did our public engagement , we said you can either keep the parking lanes or an extra vehicle lane , but we are putting the bike lanes in . So we allowed the community to weigh in and say what was more important to them , and parking ended up being more important . So we preserved the on-street parking and took out one lane in order to be able to install a buffered bike lane .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 12:55

Well , you ask the question and then you get the answer , and then you work with the best way of getting a solution in there that works .

Stephanie Rouse 13:02

So we talked a little bit about how Shoup was really great at changing perspective around . What he said was a boring topic that most people wouldn't really engage with . What do you think are some of the key approaches or his style that worked really well around changing perspectives that others can change in their own respective fields

Making Boring Topics Engaging

Stephanie Rouse 13:21

?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 13:21

Yes , donald Shoup often did admit that parking was a boring topic for research or policy or for implementation or for anything else . But he made it much less than boring in everything that he did in writing and speaking and convincing others . So he did a really nice job of problem identification . So he started out telling us the problems of an oversupply of parking , distorted prices for parking . If we move from parking to automobiles and automobility then we have too many cars in our cities and too much dependency on them and where do we store the cars and they create pollution and congestion and noise . So he really identified for the problem for us in a nice way . He then used sound research to explore those problems and potential solutions .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 14:08

Remember , he was an economist . He was an economist by training and he once told me that he maybe became interested in parking because he considered every instance of parking . Anytime a car is parked in a city it is an economic negotiation between the person who wants to park and where they're parking if there's a cost for it . If there's not a direct cost then there's an indirect cost . So we have sort of an economic underpinning to his work .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 14:35

Then I think his outreach . So when he had research results and recommendations and suggestions to share . He was so good at the outreach that he conducted , talking to concerned people , helping them to think about how to devise and implement change . A few of the authors in the book have referred to Donald Shoup as being tenacious , so he had a lot of energy and he stuck with an idea . In fact , he worked on this problem of misaligned parking policies and prices for decades even when no one was listening , and he continued to work on the problem even in locations where talking about changing parking policies was very unpopular . He lived and worked in Los Angeles , where the automobile culture reigned , so he really stuck with his topic and really gave us some nice ways of carrying this through a career .

Jennifer Hiatt 15:24

So one of the articles points out that nearly 30 years after Shoup's 1997 article on parking reform , most students still come out of planning programs really only learning

Parking Education Gap in Planning Programs

Jennifer Hiatt 15:34

about . You know parking requirements are bad , but not learning about how to solve the actual parking problems . We have 30 years of Shoup's research . Why do you think most universities haven't picked up this topic yet ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 15:46

I really hope we can change this this with my book , which we're talking about today , with Shoop's publications and other publications . You know it takes a long time to change people's patterns and thoughts and Shoop was so consistent in his work . And , as I said in my opening , we have been seeing more movement in changing parking policies around the country , so that's a good thing . I think it's helpful for us to see example projects where parking reform has occurred and where we can measure the outcomes . So if we can show that to students , if we can have example projects that professors are willing to present to students in courses , it can do some convincing .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 16:25

Besides instructors and universities , as you pointed out , we're also seeing the urban planning and transportation planning professions slow on the uptake of parking reforms and it's often the work of advocacy groups that gets parking reform started in particular cities . So the grassroots activists and the bottom-up approach has really made some movement in parking reform . They are having to convince the urban planners , who are actually the ones that are responsible for setting policy and implementing policy in parking . So we would like to see professional planners have the courage to not accept the status quo , begin embracing parking reform and especially trying to remove minimum parking requirements from zoning regulations to take these large parking lots away from the required part of what cities do and let the market decide how big parking lots should be .

Stephanie Rouse 17:20

There are numerous examples now of reducing

Parking Minimums vs. Maximums Debate

Stephanie Rouse 17:23

and , in a lot of cases , removing parking minimums altogether , but a bunch of these communities have also added in parking maximums . When they remove the minimums , some of them will just change the minimum to become a maximum , but it seemed like there was a little bit of disagreement within the book on different authors whether maximums were a good approach . What is your thought on the topic ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 17:43

Well , donald Shoup used to tell a funny story true story . But this goes back to the late 1990s , early 2000s , when Los Angeles was building a new concert hall downtown adjacent to the Music Center and this eventually became Disney Hall , which opened in 2003 . But in the years before that LA's zoning policy required off-street parking for the facility . So the first thing that was built was an underground parking garage . It was six stories underground , over 2,000 parking spaces . That parking lot was constructed before the concert hall itself . That parking garage cost , I think , about $110 million to build . And then , with the parking garage underground , when the concert hall was built , they parked below ground , they came above ground and they were right there at the concert hall where they needed to be , but not necessarily engaging with street life . Now , at the same time , there was a concert hall being built in San Francisco , the Dave East Symphony Hall . But in San Francisco it was built with no off-street parking because San Francisco didn't mandate minimum parking for such venues . San Francisco did have parking maximums around that time or maybe a little bit later , but those were mostly for housing .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 18:58

So , as you say , there are a couple chapters in the book that mention parking maximums . These would tell property owners and developers the maximum number of parking spaces which can be built . But for decades before this we're actually used to the terminology and the practice of minimum parking requirements . So with these maximums , a developer or property owner cannot exceed a parking lot size set forth in the zoning .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 19:23

But you know , it might be harder to get people to wrap their head around the idea of a parking maximum , and that is , as you say , bandied about in some of the chapters in the book . But I like to think that it might be easier to start in the area of deregulation , which means simply removing minimum parking requirements from zoning codes . So it's a simple act of striking something out of the zoning code and then you let the market decide how much parking is needed , although in congested cities that are experiencing development there is a risk that you could , you know of course , have more parking come along than the previous minimum parking requirements said had to be in place . But I think it's a nice idea to simply approach parking reform as deregulation , where you take away the minimum parking requirements that are in zoning codes .

Jennifer Hiatt 20:13

When you were working on this book , you brought together some of the best minds in parking and dedicated an entire chapter to the challenges and successes of implementing parking reform . As we've been talking about , what do you think are some of the biggest challenges to parking reform and also what is your favorite success

Buffalo's Parking Reform Success Story

Jennifer Hiatt 20:30

story ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 20:30

So I'm happy to say there are more and more examples of parking reform and large-scale parking reform that we can look at . I'll give an example right now , but I'm lucky that I'm living and teaching now in Buffalo , new York . I teach at the University of Buffalo , and Buffalo removed its minimum parking requirements from its zoning code in 2017 . It was the largest city to do so at the time , so it sort of made some splashy news about parking , but it didn't take long for other cities , larger cities , to jump on the bandwagon Hartford , san Jose , birmingham , raleigh , sacramento , mexico City but you know , buffalo was the big one to do it at the time and Buffalo might be an unlikely candidate for progressive parking reform , but the minimum parking requirements were removed as part of a wholesale zoning revision and Buffalo then had a zoning code dating from the 1950s , so it was like a 50-something-year-old zoning code and the whole zoning code was rewritten .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 21:31

Buffalo , of course , has had , or has , reputation as a slow-growth city . There was a lot of population loss and economic decline since the 1970s , so the parking requirements were completely removed in 2017 . So that means any developer or property owner can build or convert anything on their land and they're not required to have an off-street parking lot . They may provide an off-street parking lot , but they're not required to , and any existing parking lot for a business or building does not have to be there , so land can be converted to something else . So I jumped on with some research soon after that happened else . So I jumped on with some research soon after that happened and I did a before analysis with development data for several years after the zoning reform , and what I found is that about half of new developments reduced the size of their parking lot after the reform and then on average the parking lots were cut in half . There were examples of apartment buildings built in Buffalo with no off-street parking , so this would not have been possible before the zoning reform . So no parking lots off-street , and the biggest effect was for mixed-use buildings . So these were generally apartment buildings with other commercial uses on the first and second floors and then also along transit-rich corridors . Buffalo has Light Rail , metro Rail , going through the center of the city . So I've written about parking reform in Buffalo previously , but also in the current book .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 22:54

But , linking my answer here to the question that you asked , there's another chapter by an author who works as a consultant in Los Angeles . This is Stefan Turov and he reminds us that removing minimum parking requirements is really a form of deregulation , and he said that most urban planning projects that we bring through City Hall , that we bring through a government , require a new program , a new budget , new staff members , a new website to oversee them . If we're thinking of a new program , it requires new resources , but we don't always have those resources . On the other hand , removing minimum parking requirements takes away a requirement . It is cost-free for cities . It's a zoning change and then it's cost-free and , as some of the authors write about in the chapters , it can even streamline the development process . It can make development smoother . Sometimes there are no longer parking studies needed , fewer or no zoning variants requested when it comes to parking , so it can , in some ways , make the property development process go even better .

Stephanie Rouse 23:59

I imagine , for all of the development review . Planners in those communities that have gotten rid of minimum parking requirements are pretty happy that they're not counting parking stalls anymore and trying to find that the developments are in compliance . So you've kind of touched on this a little bit throughout the episode , but without Don Shoup here as our leader in the field of parking reform , I mean , it seems like there's very few individuals that can be synonymous with a certain aspect of city planning in the way that Don has been

Shoup's Legacy and Future of Parking Reform

Stephanie Rouse 24:27

. What do you think's next for the field , don ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 24:28

Shoup . I think I'm about to find that out for myself . In the coming weeks I will be setting out to deliver a number of presentations about this book in cities throughout the USA and even abroad . But I do always remember to tell myself that parking reform is mostly a local activity in the US , so it's happening locally at the municipality level , except where we've seen the beginnings of wider geographical reform attempts and even statewide reform . In Oregon , in California , there has been legislation to restrict parking requirements in areas served by public transit . But I expect , as I move around and talk to people now that this book is finished and out there , I expect to hear from advocates and shoopistas what they have been able to accomplish using Shoop's insights . So I'm excited to hear those movements forward in practice and what they have on their agendas for their next activities .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 25:26

Donald Shoop left us with a really useful roadmap for three parking reforms . Number one remove minimum parking requirements from city zoning codes . Number two charge market rates for curb parking . So whenever we have curb parking we know it's often underpriced if we compare it to the price of nearby parking lots . In many cases those parking meters need to be raised so they're at market rates and that discourages people from consuming too much curbside parking . And then , number three , establish local parking districts , so this could be in commercial districts or even in residential neighborhoods , and then allocate the revenue toward local improvements . These could be streetscape improvements , improving bike lanes and sidewalks and landscaping , so that people can see with their own eyes the benefits of paying into a system for parking and not have the parking fees that they pay go into the general revenue of the city . So he gave us those three parking reforms that people are taking forward and implementing . So we will take a look at how those are being implemented and what are the outcomes .

Jennifer Hiatt 26:32

So the city of Lincoln that Stephanie and I work for , we like to think we're doing pretty well in parking , but the one thing that still just really irritates me is all of our parking funding still goes into general fund . Working on it , but it's very irritating .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 26:46

Yeah , you know , people are actually paying their fee to park at the curb and they think , ah , I'm just supporting the city government and I don't know where this money goes and maybe there's corruption or something wrong with the funding and I don't know what I'm paying for . But if we can actually have parking revenue , pay for improvements that people can see , they can change their attitude about paying for parking and even if we have to raise the parking fee , that they'll see some benefit for what they're paying for Exactly .

Jennifer Hiatt 27:15

Obviously , shoop's name will forever be tied to parking , and that's the majority of the concepts that you guys talk about in your book . But he was a prolific academic , really . So what is one of his other wild ideas that you wish researchers would pick up and run with ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 27:30

So outside the world of parking . Actually , back when I was a graduate student , he and I worked on research about prepaid transit passes as an incentive for not driving and consuming parking spaces , so people

Beyond Parking: Shoup's Other Ideas

Daniel Baldwin Hess 27:42

, through a university or an employer or a neighborhood organization , could purchase transit passes for everybody and then reduce automobile dependence . So that's one thing we worked on , but maybe the one that I'll mention that relates to your question is a project that he was working on in more recent years called Broken Sidewalks . Donald Shoup was looking at deteriorating sidewalks in Los Angeles . Los Angeles is a large city . It's over 500 square miles . It's not the largest city in the US , but it's one of the larger ones and there are almost 11,000 miles of sidewalk . So you can imagine there are sidewalks along both sides of almost every street in Los Angeles . And what he found was that about 45% of those sidewalks are damaged or inaccessible . It's concrete , so there's wear and tear , there's damage to those sidewalks , and the estimated repair cost of all those sidewalks and the estimated repair cost of all those sidewalks was something like $1.5 billion . So these broken sidewalks they're really unsightly but they're dangerous , especially for people with disabilities , and then they increasingly become a legal liability and there was a court ruling about 20 years ago that affirmed that the ADA , the Americans with Disabilities Act , applies to sidewalks . So Donald Shoup found that the city of Los Angeles pays tens of millions of dollars each year in maintenance and construction of sidewalks , and it also pays out money in injury or damage lawsuits , and then in reality the city can only afford to repair a tiny fraction of what is needed . So most of these broken sidewalks go unrepaired for quite some time .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 29:18

Okay , so now we get to Donald Shoup's idea To repair these sidewalks . He proposed shifting the cost to property owners . Now you might say what ? You're going to ask people who own property or houses or other types of buildings that they have to pay to repair the sidewalks . But he devised a pay-on-exit strategy . So what that means is when a property owner sells a property that the sidewalk would be inspected , and if it's determined at that time the sidewalk is broken , then the owner is required to pay the repair costs . But because it's at the moment that they're selling the property , they would have the liquidity to do so . So they would have funds from the sale of the property to pay then .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 30:01

So Donald Shoup wrote a few articles about this , he wrote some op-eds and he did get some interest from the city . The idea is that there would be a pay on exit strategy here that would speed up repairs and avoid a broad based tax increase . So we were just talking about these fees that you pay to the city in the question before this , and nobody wants to see a tax increase to fix the broken sidewalks . But if we could shift that to that , owners would pay it , but only when they sold the property . It could help us incrementally improve sidewalks and make our cities more livable and safer . So it's sort of an exciting vision about something that could happen in Los Angeles or other cities .

Stephanie Rouse 30:42

Yeah , it'll be interesting to see if that catches on . And our last question , always for the podcast , as this is Booked on Planning in addition to your book , which we recommend everyone get a copy of , what other books would you recommend our readers check out ?

Daniel Baldwin Hess 30:56

There are so many good books that relate to urban planning and even books that are planning adjacent , that planners can learn so much about , and for me I'm always going to gravitate toward a book that has something to do with urban history . I'm sort of a history nut in that way , and I like to learn about the history of cities and places to understand why they look the way they do now , based on historical events of the past , and what that might mean for the future . So with that context , I would pick a book called Sand Rush the Revival of the Beach in 20th Century Los Angeles . This was published last year , 2024 , by an author called Elsa Devine , last year , 2024 , by an author called Elsa Devine .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 31:37

So we're set here in Los Angeles and the author is looking at the historical development of coastlines in Southern California and Los Angeles going back to the early 1900s when there were amusement parks , and then through the many decades of various approaches to beaches and recreation and fun at the shore , and then moving to the environmental movements of the 1960s . So it does a really good job of weaving together culture and increasing environmental concerns , urban development and city planning history . I always like to learn more about Los Angeles . I lived there for many years when I was a graduate student , because it's so interesting to think about how it moved from the small settlements that once defined the region to the complex metropolitan area it is today , and so this book helps us think about , in that complex region , access to water and beaches and the coastline

Book Recommendations and Closing

Daniel Baldwin Hess 32:23

, and then how we can protect the land and sea for people , for animals and for our natural ecosystems .

Stephanie Rouse 32:29

It would be a great book to add to our ever-growing list of recommended readings from our authors . But , daniel , thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to talk about the Shoop Doctrine .

Daniel Baldwin Hess 32:40

Thank you , it was very fun to talk to you .

Jennifer Hiatt 32:42

We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Daniel Baldwin Hess on his book the Shoop Doctrine Essays Celebrating Donald Shoop and Parking Reforms . You can get your own copy through the publisher at Rutledge support your local bookstore or online from bookshoporg . Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate , review and share the show . Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning . Thank you .