The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition

By: Donald Shoup

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

In this no-holds-barred treatise, Donald Shoup argues that free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment.

Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. Shoup proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking - namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking. Such measures, according to the Yale-trained economist and UCLA planning professor, will make parking easier and driving less necessary.

Join the swelling ranks of Shoupistas by picking up this book today. You'll never look at a parking spot the same way again.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2011 Taylor & Francis (P)2018 Gildan Media

Excellent and detailed treatise on parking

I learned so much from this book. I am a local activist and this taught me how offstreet minimum parking requirements harm our cities and societies, as well as what to do about it. Importantly, it discusses how to make parking reforms not only politically viable but even politically popular. I also have the ebook and found that is really nice to be able to highlight and bookmark certain sections for future review.

This is not a light read. It is full of data from research studies and has detailed explanations and examples. There is some repetitiveness. My much of it is because a concept was introduced earlier in the book and then later is discussed in much more detail. Sometimes the repetitiveness is reiterating or reminding important points from previous chapters or sections. Personally I found that extremely helpful. Most people don't learn things from a single exposure to it; rather, most people learn from repetition, especially with different senses. So, it was helpful for me in my learning process to hear points reiterated or discussed in much more detail.

Overall I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be an advocate to help make their town or city better.

A Great Listen

This book teaches researchers how to use innovation to convert a noisy subjective topics of life, into objective theory. Best book I have read ever. waiting for the audio version of his next "Parking & the City".

To my fellow gluttons for punishment

This audiobook/book is so well written I listened to many hours all about parking. Either that or I am just as insane as I feared.

A must read for anyone who cares about their community

So many great ideas, many hours of learning and listening to issues and ways to improve aspects on parking, and interesting occasions where you refer to an accompanying pdf with diagrams or equations. This is probably best read in paper but there’s nothing like someone speaking to you about issues with parking and while driving and really let the issues sink in as you witness your surroundings.

Repetitive

The book is very dense and long. There are appendices and graphs, quotes and citations. Overall, I learned a lot from this book and would highly recommend it as a reading. However, the writing is quite repetitive and at times full chapters seem to go over information that was already described in detail in some chapters previous.