Podcast appearances and mentions of Donald Shoup

A tribute for — and a republish of our August '24 episode with — Donald Shoup. May he rest in peace. What a life he led.

SPONSORS For a quarter century, the Parking Industry Expo has been where parking professionals come to shape the future of our industry. This March 31st through April 3rd, join us as we celebrate PIE's 25th anniversary – our biggest and most innovative expo yet. Connect with industry leaders, discover cutting-edge technologies, and be part of the next chapter in parking excellence. Don't miss this milestone event. Register now at parkingtoday.com/pie25 and use discount code ParkingPod25 for an exclusive 50% off Parking Podcast discount. This episode is brought to you by Parker Technology, the customer experience solution of choice for the parking industry. Our solution puts a virtual ambassador in every lane, to help parking guests pay and get on their way in under a minute. Whether you utilize our customer service team, your team in conjunction with our software platform, or a combination of both, we help you capture revenue, provide better customer service, enable your staff to focus on higher priority tasks, and keep traffic moving. With the Parker Technology solution, you'll also enjoy access to real-time call data and recordings. Learn more at parkertechnology.com/parkingpodcast and subscribe to our podcast “Harder Than It Looks: Parking Uncovered.” This episode is brought to you by Eleven-X. Take control of your parking with eXactpark, a smart parking solution that provides real-time occupancy monitoring at the stall level and powerful data insights. eXactpark enables drivers to quickly and easily find available parking while helping organizations balance their parking space use, better manage the curbside, reduce congestion and offer optimized programs and policies for a better parking experience for all. Learn more at eleven-x.com. This episode is brought to you by Parkmobile. Parkmobile, a part of EasyPark Group, is the leading provider of smart parking and mobility solutions in North America, using a contactless approach to help millions of people easily find, reserve, and pay for parking on their mobile devices. Learn more about parkmobile.io. This episode is brought to you by Parkalytics. I wish this solution was around when I was an operator and consultant doing parking studies and chasing parking lease deals. What Parkalytics does is that they will take drone images of parking lots and/or on-street parking for a given time period and then upload those images into their parkalytics software. Within a matter of seconds, it will provide you parking counts, turnover studies, utilization studies, you name it. You can now wow your clients or supervisors by having a complete snapshot of the parking usage for a fraction of the price of a traditional parking study. Learn more at parkalytics.com. WEBSITES AND RESOURCES https://www.parkingcast.com/ https://parkingtoday.com/podcast/ https://eleven-x.com/ www.parkertechnology.com/parkingpodcast https://parkmobile.io/ https://www.parkalytics.com/2025 PARKING TODAY PIE CONFERENCE HUGE DISCOUNT: Visit parkingtoday.com/pie25 and use discount code ParkingPod25 for an exclusive 50% off discount as a fan of The Parking Podcast.

Backing away from European security guarantees and seeking mineral rights in Ukraine as recompense for military aid: at the Munich Security Conference the Trump administration made its convention-trashing, transactional nature clear. What Europe will or even can do is not so obvious. And a tribute to Donald Shoup, whose studies on keeping cars moving focused on where they parked (17:45).Get a world of insights by subscribing to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Backing away from European security guarantees and seeking mineral rights in Ukraine as recompense for military aid: at the Munich Security Conference the Trump administration made its convention-trashing, transactional nature clear. What Europe will or even can do is not so obvious. And a tribute to Donald Shoup, whose studies on keeping cars moving focused on where they parked (17:45).Get a world of insights by subscribing to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck is joined by Victor Dover, a planner and urban designer. They discuss the work and legacy of Dr. Donald Shoup, an engineer and professor of urban planning who revolutionized the fields of urban planning and parking reform with his book “The High Cost of Free Parking.” They also talk about their own relationships with Dr. Shoup and how he impacted their work as an engineer and planner. Then, keep listening for a rerun of an interview with Dr. Shoup that Chuck had in 2015. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The High Cost of Free Parking” (Amazon). Victor Dover (LinkedIn). Chuck Marohn (Substack).

In this episode, I connect with Phil Burns, Managing Principal of the Pasadena-based Arroyo Group, for a discussion about his six-week trial of going car-free this past summer and the people-oriented street transformations in the Los Angeles area that the Arroyo Group is involved with. Phil provides a comprehensive breakdown of his modal mix during his car-free experience, including transit, walking, and cycling with a rented electric assist bike from a local non-profit, Active SGV. Phil also mentions the exciting development of a Dutch-style protected/separated bike lane and protected intersection in Glendora, CA.We mention Prof. Donald Shoup, who passed away after this episode was recorded but before its release.Thank you so much for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred listening platform. Also, don't forget to check out the Active Towns Channel for more video content.Helpful Links (note that some may include affiliate links to help me support the channel):- The Arroyo Group website- Active SGV website- Phil's Car Free for Six Weeks Post on LinkedIn- Ep 270 Patty Wiens - Winnipeg Bicycle Mayor- Ep 183 Travis Norvell - The Pedaling Pastor- Week Without Driving website- Ep 245 Anna Zivarts - When Driving Is Not An Option- Ep 275 Prof Donald Shoup - A Final Conversation- Strong Towns websiteIf you are a fan of the Active Towns Podcast, please consider supporting the effort as an Active Towns Ambassador in the following ways:1. Join our Patreon community. Contributions start at just $3 per month2. If you enjoyed this episode, you can also "leave a tip" through "Buy Me a Coffee"3. Make a donation to my non-profit, Advocates for Healthy Communities, Inc., to help support my pro bono work with citiesCredits:- Video and audio production by John Simmerman- Music via Epidemic SoundResources used during the production of this video:- My recording platform is Ecamm Live- Editing software Adobe Creative Cloud Suite- Equipment: Contact me for a complete listFor more information about the Active Towns effort or to follow along, please visit our links below:- Active Towns Website- Active Towns on Bluesky- Weekly Update e-NewsletterBackground:Hi Everyone! My name is John Simmerman, and I'm a health promotion and public health professional with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization in how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.Since 2010,  I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be while striving to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."The Active Towns Channel features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.Thanks once again for tuning in! I hope you find this content helpful and insightful.Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2025 ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Donald Shoup, author of "The High Cost of Free Parking," has died. Tony Jordan, President of the Parking Reform Network, talks about Shoup's decades of teaching, writing, and speaking on reversing subsidized free car storage (1:16). Find our interviews with the Professor of Parking by searching "Shoup" at biketalk.org. CalBike Joins Amicus Brief in Safe Streets Accountability Case after lower courts categorized bike riders as “recreational” street users who venture onto public streets at their own risk. Kendra Ramsey, Executive Director of the California Bicycle Coalition, lays out how sweeping the implications could be for California's riders (11:00). The man who coined the famous term "15 Minute Cities" and was central to Paris' bike revolution, Carlos Moreno (19:49). Reviews by Elly Blue, author of Bikenomics and editor of Portland's Microcosm Publishing: Marshall Taylor's autobiography, Romantasy "The Ministry of Time," and the anime film Suzume (41:18). Buy the books Elly reviewed at Bike.org's Bookshop. Eric Dunn, Director of the Wild and Scenic film festival, on bike-related offerings in this year's lineup (47:07). Detroit's Bike The Blizzard rides this month with Back Alley Bikes. Justin and Reo Ramsey relate (54:54).

Today on the show the guys remember legend in parking reform Donald Shoup, level crossing dangers, SEPTA cuts for Eagles celebration and Donald trump looking to eliminate NYC bike lanes.Send us a question: radiofreeurbanism@gmail.comPatreon: patreon.com/RadioFreeUrbanism Instagram: https://rb.gy/ezn9rzX(Twitter): https://x.com/RFUrbanism?s=20Alex: https://www.youtube.com/@humanecitiesEthan: https://www.youtube.com/@climateandtransitNic: https://www.youtube.com/@nicthedoorLinks: Donald Shoup: https://parkingreform.org/donald-shoup/ Level Crossing Crash: https://www.threads.net/@kslnews/post/DF-tdshuYMB?xmt=AQGz51Qc1mhwpw8vzZy7y2aBWiebOzFsoJZ_xx2AuXv9kXQSPETA Super Bowl: https://wwww.septa.org/news/super-bowl-parade/ Trump to remove bike lanes: https://cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/news/president-trump-vows-to-remove-bike-lanes-in-nyc/

This week at Mondays at The Overhead Wire, we're joined by Streetsblog USA's Kea Wilson to chat about the new USDOT directives from the Trump administration. We talk about rescinded memos, funding memos, and Kea thinks Jeff might be trying to hard to find logic in the reasoning for using birth and marriage rates to steer transportation funding. Below are items we chatted about on the show.... Donald Shoup was about more than just parking - CPDR Unflooding the zone - T4America Why DOT is promising more money for higher birthrates - Streetsblog USA Rescinding DOT policy Memo - USDOT Weird funding mechanisms and edicts Memo - USDOT Social cost of carbon - Washington Post Birth rate funding would leave communities behind - Urban Institute The Brake Podcast at Streetsblog USA +++ Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Substack ... @theoverheadwire Follow us on Mastadon theoverheadwire@sfba.social Support the show on Patreon http://patreon.com/theoverheadwire Buy books on our Bookshop.org Affiliate site!  And get our Cars are Cholesterol shirt at Tee-Public! And everything else at http://theoverheadwire.com

Donald Shoup, a towering figure in the world of urban planning and a distinguished professor emeritus at the UCLA Luskin School of Public affairs, died this week. He was 86 years old. As a tribute to such an influential, brilliant, and witty scholar, we are re-releasing this episode from 2023. ---- Parking is at the heart of every fight about how we build our cities and towns, with effects that go far beyond transportation. Minimum parking requirements  — laws that dictate how many parking spaces are required for various types of buildings and businesses — make housing more expensive, raise the price of goods and services and exacerbate sprawl, making congestion and the climate crisis much, much worse. Thankfully, a movement is afoot to end parking minimums, inspired by the work of Donald Shoup. Shoup, the Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA's Department of Urban Planning, is the author of the 2005 book The High Cost of Free Parking. It's an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand the problems with parking. Professor Shoup — aka the Shoup Dogg — joins us for a spirited conversation about how to win what he calls “the war on parking subsidies.” You can find the full transcript of this episode here. Support The War on Cars on Patreon and receive exclusive access to ad-free versions of regular episodes, Patreon-only bonus content, invitations to live events, merch discounts and free stickers! LINKS: Learn all about Donald Shoup at ShoupDogg.com. Read The High Cost of Free Parking. Join The Parking Reform Network and end parking requirements where you live. Donald Shoup gets animated on Adam Ruins Everything. This episode was produced by Doug Gordon, edited by Ali Lemer, and recorded by Josh Wilcox of the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell Gragg. TheWarOnCars.org

In this Season 9 Premiere of the Podcast, I reconnect with Professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, affectionately known as "Shoup Dogg," in honor of his rockstar status and birthplace of Long Beach, CA. We discuss the momentum of the parking reform movement to help create more affordable and walkable communities, as well as the huge challenge of LA's sidewalks in disrepair and the opportunity to make a major transformation in walkability in Los Angeles before the 2028 Olympics.Note: This episode was recorded in the waning days of 2024, but given the devastating fires currently raging in LA, my original "hometown," my heart just breaks for everyone living through these challenging times.Thank you so much for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred listening platform. Also, don't forget to check out the Active Towns Channel for more video content.Helpful Links (note that some may include affiliate links to help me support the channel):- My first episode with the Shoup Dogg - Shoup's website - Parking Reform Network - Shoup books available in my bookshop - Torched Newsletter by Alissa Walker- Adam Ruins Cars Parking ClipIf you are a fan of the Active Towns Podcast, please consider supporting the effort as an Active Towns Ambassador in the following ways:1. Join our Patreon community. Contributions start at just $1 per month(Note: Patron benefits include early, ad-free access to content and a 15% discount in the Active Towns Merch Store)2. If you enjoyed this episode, you can also "leave a tip" through "Buy Me a Coffee"3. Pick up some Active Towns #StreetsAreForPeople Merch at my storeCredits:- Video and audio production by John Simmerman- Music via Epidemic SoundResources used during the production of this video:- My recording platform is Ecamm Live- Editing software Adobe Creative Cloud Suite- Equipment: Contact me for a complete listFor more information about the Active Towns effort or to follow along, please visit our links below:- Active Towns Website- Active Towns on Twitter- Periodic e-NewsletterBackground:Hi Everyone! My name is John Simmerman, and I'm a health promotion and public health professional with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization in how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.Since 2010,  I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be while striving to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."The Active Towns Channel features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.Thanks once again for tuning in! I hope you find this content helpful and insightful.Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2025 ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

At first glance, parking might seem like a mundane topic, but Dr. Donald Shoup shows us it is anything but. In this episode, we explore how parking policies shape our cities, influence our daily lives, and even contribute to a societal Stockholm syndrome with cars. Join us as we uncover the hidden consequences of where and how we park, and why it matters more than you might think. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Donald Shoup — economist, author, and distinguished research professor at UCLA — is in good traffic this week re-emphasizing the economic implications of free parking and its hidden costs, advocating for reforms such as market-based pricing for curb parking and parking benefit districts. He delves into the nuances between doctrine and dogma, sharing his perspective from a summary of lifelong research and practice in cities nationwide. The conversation explores various cities (including good traffic's home base in Columbus, Ohio) that are implementing these changes, promoting the idea that paid parking and strategically managed space can improve urban environments dramatically. We discuss: 00:00 Donald Shoup is in good traffic. 00:37 Doctrine vs. Dogma in urban planning. 01:53 Challenging minimum parking requirements. 03:48 The evolution of parking policies. 04:44 On parking economics within research and universities. 07:23 On American parking reform. 10:20 Parking benefit districts and performance parking. 10:49 Unexpected success stories. 18:29 The political landscape surrounding parking. 19:26 Value of an economist approach to the parking conversation. 24:16 Parking cash outs and employer transit stipends. 28:57 The hidden costs of free parking. 32:58 The direction of parking reform. 36:40 Wrapping up. 37:35 A Shoup pitch: paid parking and free podcasts. Further context: Donald's book: The High Cost of Free Parking. The Shoup Doggma, referenced in this episode. A summary of the three reform tools discussed, from Vox. Connect with Donald: shoupdogg.com On LinkedIn. On Twitter. Connect with me, Brad: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On Instagram.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On TikTok⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On LinkedIn⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

DESCRIPTIONDonald Shoup, FACIP, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is back to discuss more parking reforms.SPONSORSThis episode is brought to you by Parker Technology, the customer experience solution of choice for the parking industry. Our solution puts a virtual ambassador in every lane, to help parking guests pay and get on their way in under a minute. Whether you utilize our customer service team, your team in conjunction with our software platform, or a combination of both, we help you capture revenue, provide better customer service, enable your staff to focus on higher priority tasks, and keep traffic moving. With the Parker Technology solution, you'll also enjoy access to real-time call data and recordings. Learn more at parkertechnology.com/parkingpodcast and subscribe to our podcast “Harder Than It Looks: Parking Uncovered.”This episode is brought to you by Eleven-X. Take control of your parking with eXactpark, a smart parking solution that provides real-time occupancy monitoring at the stall level and powerful data insights. eXactpark enables drivers to quickly and easily find available parking while helping organizations balance their parking space use, better manage the curbside, reduce congestion and offer optimized programs and policies for a better parking experience for all. Learn more at eleven-x.com.This episode is brought to you by PAVE Mobility. PAVE Mobility is the leader in automated parking enforcement. PAVE installs fixed LPR cameras at no charge to you so PAVE can capture parkers who did not make a payment and send them a notice in the mail. Learn why so many asset owners and operators are switching over to PAVE at pavemobility.com or email me at isaiah.mouw@pavemobility.com.This episode is brought to you by Parkalytics. I wish this solution was around when I was an operator and consultant doing parking studies and chasing parking lease deals. What Parkalytics does is that they will take drone images of parking lots and/or on-street parking for a given time period and then upload those images into their parkalytics software. Within a matter of seconds, it will provide you parking counts, turnover studies, utilization studies, you name it. You can now wow your clients or supervisors by having a complete snapshot of the parking usage for a fraction of the price of a traditional parking study. Learn more at parkalytics.com.This episode is brought to you by Amteck. Amteck is an electrical, technologies, and fire safety contractor with offices and teams positioned across the Mid-South. Whether your parking structure needs new electrical panels and EV charger updates, CCTV and parking sensor installations, or inspections of a fire suppression system, Amteck can handle it for you. They bring honesty and a friendly attitude to every job. Learn more at amteck.com.This episode is brought to you by NoiseVu Audio Security. NoiseVu installs discreet security technology in your parking facilities designed to identify different sounds of importance such as glass breaking, gunshots, fights, catalytic converter theft and more to notify your security staff immediately. Learn why more and more parking facilities are installing NoiseVu to improve their safety at an incredibly low price at http://www.noisevu.com. WEBSITES AND RESOURCEShttps://www.parkingcast.com/https://eleven-x.com/https://www.helpmeparker.com/parkingpodcast/https://pavemobility.com/https://www.amteck.com/https://www.parkalytics.com/https://www.noisevu.com/http://www.parkingmerchantprocessing.com/https://www.parkingcast.com/pcaMERCHCheck out some of our awesome parking themed t-shirts and other merch at parkingcast.com/swag.MUSEUMCheck out some of our artifacts from the world's first parking museum at parkingcast.com/museum.

DESCRIPTIONDonald Shoup, FACIP, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is back to discuss more parking reforms.SPONSORSThis episode is brought to you by Parker Technology, the customer experience solution of choice for the parking industry. Our solution puts a virtual ambassador in every lane, to help parking guests pay and get on their way in under a minute. Whether you utilize our customer service team, your team in conjunction with our software platform, or a combination of both, we help you capture revenue, provide better customer service, enable your staff to focus on higher priority tasks, and keep traffic moving. With the Parker Technology solution, you'll also enjoy access to real-time call data and recordings. Learn more at parkertechnology.com/parkingpodcast and subscribe to our podcast “Harder Than It Looks: Parking Uncovered.”This episode is brought to you by Eleven-X. Take control of your parking with eXactpark, a smart parking solution that provides real-time occupancy monitoring at the stall level and powerful data insights. eXactpark enables drivers to quickly and easily find available parking while helping organizations balance their parking space use, better manage the curbside, reduce congestion and offer optimized programs and policies for a better parking experience for all. Learn more at eleven-x.com.This episode is brought to you by PAVE Mobility. PAVE Mobility is the leader in automated parking enforcement. PAVE installs fixed LPR cameras at no charge to you so PAVE can capture parkers who did not make a payment and send them a notice in the mail. Learn why so many asset owners and operators are switching over to PAVE at pavemobility.com or email me at isaiah.mouw@pavemobility.com.This episode is brought to you by Parkalytics. I wish this solution was around when I was an operator and consultant doing parking studies and chasing parking lease deals. What Parkalytics does is that they will take drone images of parking lots and/or on-street parking for a given time period and then upload those images into their parkalytics software. Within a matter of seconds, it will provide you parking counts, turnover studies, utilization studies, you name it. You can now wow your clients or supervisors by having a complete snapshot of the parking usage for a fraction of the price of a traditional parking study. Learn more at parkalytics.com.This episode is brought to you by Amteck. Amteck is an electrical, technologies, and fire safety contractor with offices and teams positioned across the Mid-South. Whether your parking structure needs new electrical panels and EV charger updates, CCTV and parking sensor installations, or inspections of a fire suppression system, Amteck can handle it for you. They bring honesty and a friendly attitude to every job. Learn more at amteck.com.This episode is brought to you by NoiseVu Audio Security. NoiseVu installs discreet security technology in your parking facilities designed to identify different sounds of importance such as glass breaking, gunshots, fights, catalytic converter theft and more to notify your security staff immediately. Learn why more and more parking facilities are installing NoiseVu to improve their safety at an incredibly low price at http://www.noisevu.com. WEBSITES AND RESOURCEShttps://www.parkingcast.com/https://eleven-x.com/https://www.helpmeparker.com/parkingpodcast/https://pavemobility.com/https://www.amteck.com/https://www.parkalytics.com/https://www.noisevu.com/http://www.parkingmerchantprocessing.com/https://www.parkingcast.com/pcaMERCHCheck out some of our awesome parking themed t-shirts and other merch at parkingcast.com/swag.MUSEUMCheck out some of our artifacts from the world's first parking museum at parkingcast.com/museum.

We must talk about your parking regulations. In fact, we must mock them. In no other area of life do head spins quicker, and people's opinions take on truly bizarre forms, than we we talk about parking. I get it, we are a culture obsessed with driving and parking. It's part of nearly adult's daily routine. In this episode, Tony Jordan of the Parking Reform Network and I have some fun with it, while also diving into the nitty-gritty of how to make change in your community.As a bonus, Tony describes some of the most bizarre, and most hilarious parking requirements he's run across.Here's a link to Donald Shoup's article, “Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong.”Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Transcript:Kevin K (00:00.92) Welcome back to the Missy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. Today we're going to talk about everybody's favorite topic, parking. The bane of my existence for most of my professional career, but we've got Tony Jordan here with us today from the Parking Reform Network. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation so we can get into the weeds a little bit on what's actually an incredibly important topic. So Tony, welcome. Tony Jordan (00:28.617) Thanks so much. Happy to be here. Kevin K (00:31.064) Well, it's a pleasure to have you. I ran into you in Cincinnati at the Strong Towns National Gathering and seeing you and we were chatting over a couple of beers and it just seemed like, you know, as soon as we start talking, it feels like, well, this probably should be a podcast. You know, we should spend more time getting into things. So I'm grateful you were able to make some time to be able to join. Tony, before we go too far, why don't we tell me what is the Parking Reform Network and how... How long has it been around? Tony Jordan (01:03.081) the parking reform network is a, 501 C three organization that was founded, founded in the spring of 2019 and we launched in March of 2020. and it, yeah, it was actually okay for organizing a national organization because everything moved online. Like we, we, people were much more amenable to slacking and, using zoom calls, but we, the idea behind. Kevin K (01:16.92) Good timing. Tony Jordan (01:33.641) The need I saw, I had been doing parking reform locally in Portland, Oregon, where I'm from, or where I live, for years, helping to get rid of parking mandates that had been added back in and removing them entirely from the city and worked on upzoning projects too. And the whole while I really felt like one of the things that was missing in advancing parking reform was, having an advocacy organization and a community that really was helping to educate the public and advance these policies. The practitioners and the city council even often knew that these policies were bad, the existing ones, but the public support wasn't there. So founding the Parking Inform Network, it's a community of practitioners, academics, activists, policymakers who... We exist to kind of build a community and a movement around educating the public about parking policy and accelerating reforms. And we do that through a number of research and outreach and advocacy avenues. Kevin K (02:47.352) That's cool. So how did you, what was your background then getting into this? Were you in planning or transportation or talk a little bit about like how you came to this, to this spot. Tony Jordan (02:57.641) Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles in San Pedro, the port of LA, and went to school at Santa Cruz and got a politics degree. And then I moved up to Portland and I mostly worked in tech for most of my career, web design, backend, server services programming. And I also, but I also did a couple, I worked at a couple of jobs as a labor organizer. So my background was not at all in planning. I got rid of my car. We got rid of our household's car in 2008. I had a two year old. We had another child in 2010. And I feel like that kind of primed the pump. I started looking around transportation a little differently. And then in 2010, I read a blog post very randomly on a website called Metafilter that was about the high cost of reparking, about Professor Shoup's book that had come out years before. And I am the kind of person, if I hear something interesting, I'll go look up the Wikipedia or I'll look into it. And so I got the book on inner library loan and started reading it. And I was just like, my mind was blown. Shoop has asked me, you know, one time, what did you think when you read the book? And I was like, man, I felt like I was eating a hamburger and reading the jungle. Like it was really like, what is going on? You look once you your eyes are open to this, you look around. I live across the street from a parking lot. I worked overlooking a parking lot and I just like your. to understand why, how much these things cost and then why they're there was just like, why doesn't everyone know this? I looked at my own zoning code in Portland and actually at the time Portland was a pretty, was pretty Vanguard city. We had no parking mandates on our corridors, on our bus, our frequent service corridors that had passed in 2002 kind of to little fanfare. And, but then a couple of years later, In 2012, all of a sudden, they started building apartments on a couple of these corridors. Division Street was one, North Williams. And they were building like 30, 40, 50 apartments in a building with no parking. And they were leasing up. And then someone proposed someone got permitted at 81 unit building on the street with no parking and the neighborhood just went nuts. And they started petitioning the city council to add parking mandates back. Tony Jordan (05:18.633) And so there was a pro they started considering this and I said, Hey, I just read this book a couple of years ago and I started going to city council and I met people who were interested, but they weren't really very organized. And so I started just like creating a mailing list and, and, you know, we lost, they actually added parking mandates back in, but that kind of got me totally started. That was when I first reached out to professor Shoop. He wrote an op ed. And I started just that, that really kicked off. the fuel of like, okay, we need to be better organized on this and next time we're not gonna lose. Kevin K (05:52.152) Interesting. So if I could go back like you said in 2008, you got rid of your car. What prompted you all to, and you had a two -year -old. So what, do you like hate America so much you decided to get rid of your cars? What was that all about? Tony Jordan (06:06.665) You know, the check engine light went on and I took it into, I just afford focus 2004 focus second car ever owned. I took it to the dealer and I mean not to the dealer to the repair shop and they thought, this is the transmission. I thought, man, that transmission on that car has always been weird. Sure. And they, it was going to be $2 ,000. And, and I said, okay. And then they called me back and said, you know, it's not the transmission. We looked at it. Like we haven't charged you anything, but we think it's the computer maybe. So here. Kevin K (06:10.104) Ha ha ha. Tony Jordan (06:36.233) put this little dongle on and drive around for a week. And I said, how much does the computer cost? And they said, $2 ,000. And I was like, okay. And then I drove around and they came back and they said, nah, it's not the computer. We think it's this. How much is that? And I was like, they said engine or something, engine rebuild. And I was like, $2 ,000. And I was just like, man, if I pay for this to get fixed, I obviously expect that either the computer or the transmission will break next. And that will, so I just thought like, this is going to be a never ending money pit. So I told my wife and I discussed it and we had. We lived in Portland, we lived near Transit, I had a bike, we lived near Zipcar, right? Zipcar, it was kind of in the center of Zipcar. And so we said, let's put the car in the garage and just try six months without driving it. And we did. And then at the end of six months, I sold it to the dealer for $2 ,000. And so I was up $4 ,000. And then I never really looked back at buying a... Kevin K (07:22.52) What a cool idea. Kevin K (07:34.936) And that's just, hey, I really like, I mean, that's a great way to just like, let's test it out. Let's see if we can handle it for a while. And so then in terms of like having small children, I know myself having small children, it's not the easiest thing in the world because it's just, you know, there are so many things that you might want to take your kids to that you just need a car to get around. How did you manage that? Tony Jordan (07:55.945) I mean, some of it, we just didn't do as many things. My son took offense to this when I told him when he was older, but I said, one of the nice things was it does kind of make some decisions for you. It simplifies your life. So you're probably only gonna go to one birthday party in a weekend unless they're very close to one another, right? Like, or in a day, right? So some of it, initially we used Zipcar quite a bit and... Kevin K (08:15.608) God, that sounds magical. Tony Jordan (08:24.489) you know, tapered that off over time. And obviously with small, small kids, it's a little bit harder, but we know we carried the kids on our carriers. We never did, you know, when they got a little older, I had a bike trailer I would take to preschool. But it does, you know, you kind of adjust your life over time. It's not, it's not easy. I feel like we are a bit of like, you know, first adopters, still people who are voluntarily living in solidarity with people who can't drive. or can't own vehicles, right? Those people exist in our communities. And so, you know, I experience a lot of the same frustrations voluntarily, but I also have the capacity to try and, you know, argue for it. So, I mean, I think that, you know, my kids do sports or my daughter dances, my son does ultimate frisbee and other things, and he rides his bike to work now at Trader Joe's, and they take the bus, and they're just very independent. And I'm sure there are, you know, opportunities that... we can't do, but I mean, that's kind of life. You make decisions and in exchange, they really are, you know, they know how to get around. And I think they're gonna, I think it's gonna really give them a good leg up when they get to, you know, college or, you know, as the world has to adapt and reduce car dependency, you know, it's not gonna be as painful for them, I think, as you make these changes. Kevin K (09:51.224) How do you know, do you notice much of a difference then between like them and their friends and just other families that they, that you might run around with and like just their own habits and behaviors in that regard? Tony Jordan (10:01.769) Yeah, I mean, a lot of even though we live in a place that's pretty walkable, like obviously a lot of the other parents do drive frequently. I don't begrudge them that. My children get rides with other parents sometimes, too. I mean, we're you know, I don't think we'll offer to pay sometimes. Or, you know, like it's it's not like we're trying to be complete moochers or freeloaders on this. But, you know, like I think it on one hand, like my daughter, When she started middle school, other parents were often driving and we said, hey, we're not going to drive, so let's get our kids riding the bikes. And so our kids had their own mini bike group. And then as she didn't want to ride as much anymore, she would take the bus and other kids would learn to take the bus with her. So there is, I think, by just living a lifestyle that is less car dependent, sometimes I think people find it grating, like, these holier than thou. anti -car people, but at the same time, like it is an example. Like you can see it being done and other kids do it. My son now is 17. So he, you know, some of his friends are getting driver's licenses, but a lot of them aren't. One of the bigger conflicts is he's in film class and a lot of film is done. Well, not only logging, lugging gear around, but obviously, but it's a very common set piece, right? Is to be in a car or driving a car from point A to point B and Kevin K (11:28.248) Hmm. Tony Jordan (11:30.313) So one of his frustrations is he doesn't have a card to do these film transitions, you know, but it's, you know, I think it's worked out mostly okay. Kevin K (11:39.512) Have you ever tried to like quantify, you know, like how much money this has saved you over the years? Tony Jordan (11:47.337) I mean, I have not, other than the initial calculus I did where it was like, I'm up $4 ,000 on, and I can use that for zip car or whatever. I mean, I know it does. It definitely, I don't, I'm not the best budgeter, honestly. So I don't keep a spreadsheet, but I mean, the fact that we haven't owned a car for these years has definitely, you know, we take cheaper modes. And to some degree you do less, you do just do less stuff and that. Kevin K (12:04.26) Yeah. Tony Jordan (12:16.873) you know, simplifies your life and makes it a little bit cheaper. Kevin K (12:21.912) Yeah, I mean, I promise I'll get off on other topics, but I just find it's interesting when people are able to live in a way that we're told you can't live. So have you found that not having the car has opened up ways for you to spend money on other things in your life that maybe you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise? Tony Jordan (12:25.705) No problem. Tony Jordan (12:45.289) once again, I don't sure specifically like how much it impacts that. I mean, obviously the cost of buying some nice bikes is, you know, still much cheaper than, than spending on a car or the gas. I still have to pay for insurance. I mean, I still voluntarily pay for insurance. I don't have to, but I have a non -name donor policy, which is kind of expensive. you know, I think more, it just, it just, I find it is a much. more, it's a much more peaceful and relaxing way to live in most times. Like driving is so stressful, especially if you live in a larger city. Like it's, at least to me, it's scary. You, you, if you think about it, it's not like you're kind of making life difficult for everyone else who's not in your car at the expense of your convenience for the most part. And so I just find the ability to not have to like one of the best dividend is I never have to worry about like, you know, like that responsibility or that pressure or that inconvenience. If I'm on the bus, even if it's in traffic, I can be on my phone or be talking to who I'm with and not be worrying about piloting. Kevin K (14:00.408) Yeah, and you don't have to sweat finding a place to park wherever you're going. So that's kind of a nice thing. So then were you working in tech pretty much all the way up through the beginning of forming the Parking Reform Network? Tony Jordan (14:03.209) Exactly, yeah. Tony Jordan (14:14.025) Yeah, I mean, mostly, even when I worked for, so I worked two times for unions. I worked for the University of California, professional technical employees before I moved up to Portland. And then I worked for AFT organizing nurses. In both those jobs, I still often did the backend database or the website. And then I spent the 13 years before that working at a company that did online admissions applications. So yeah, I was mostly in. Kevin K (14:19.256) Okay. Kevin K (14:38.52) Okay, that's really cool. So then when you formed this nonprofit, who else kind of formed it with you or was this pretty much like you're taking this initiative on or were there others that really said they wanted to jump on board with you? Tony Jordan (14:51.561) I had been in discussions. So Portland has a great advocacy scene. So I had initially formed or after where I left off the story about the losing and parking mandates coming back. A couple of years after that, I started an organization called well, initially it was called Portland Shoopistas and then at Shoop's suggestion, we changed it to Portlanders for Parking Reform. And that was kind of just a low, I had a blog, a website, a newsletter, you know, an advocacy org that worked in partnership. Kevin K (15:02.488) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (15:19.657) with other coalitions to just kind of like keep an eye on what was happening with various, you know, on street and off street parking policies in Portland and in the region and, you know, organize testimony and events and just kind of build awareness. So in that process, I worked with many. Portland has just, you know, freeway fighter this year. We have, you know, housing activists. It's a great scene. Michael Anderson from Sightline Institute and I had been talking about the concept of he proposed we should have a green lane project, which was a project of people for bikes to propose protected bike lanes. He said, you know, we should have, there should be some sort of project for parking similar. Like the idea was like, maybe get a cohort of cities together and take them on a discovery trip. And then they pledged to go review their parking code. And so we had pitched, he helped pitch that around to a couple of places and no one was really interested in hosting a similar project. that kind of consensus was it's hard to fundraise for parking reform, which is true. And so a couple of years later, I was in Chicago speaking at the Parking Industry Expo with these two women, Jane Wilberding and Lindsay Bailey. And... we kind of started hatching a concept around like, you know, like what, how do we, like, what would be a larger organization or, you know, a movement around this. And then I went to APA in San Francisco in 2019, Shoop was talking and there was, you know, a bunch of parking people there. And we met another student, we met a recent grad, Mike Kwan, who had graduated from Santa Cruz and now lives in DC. And so I said, you know, I asked, basically we were out at, at, at dinner with Patrick Sigmund, who is the original Chupista. And kind of we're just talking about like, you know, I think there just should need there needs to be something there needs to be an organization that is focused holistically on parking reform, not just the mandates of the on street management. And and really, I wanted to bring this organizing capacity. So we agreed you need three, you need four people to start a nonprofit organization. And so Mike and Jane and Lindsay were the. Tony Jordan (17:44.073) three original board members and it took a couple months to get the certifications and then set up a website. And then, you know, we went public with it in March and started bringing more people on March, 2020. I mean, yeah. Kevin K (17:57.08) That's terrific. That's terrific. So obviously, one of the big pushes has been in the parking reform world has been to remove or reduce minimum parking mandates. As you've talked about these things, what are the arguments that you are using or you see other people using that are most successful in sort of moving the needle related to that issue? Tony Jordan (18:23.305) I think the problem we've had is largely just lack of information, low information about what these mandates are, what we're talking about. So what are we talking about? We're talking about rules from the seventies, sixties, fifties that are anachronistic and completely based on nothing that are these like, Sorry, hold on. Just one second. Kevin K (18:57.048) No problem. Tony Jordan (19:12.297) I might need to take a redo on that section in one second. Kevin K (19:14.552) No, it's fine. Go ahead. Kevin K (19:24.504) All right, so talk about the most effective arguments. Tony Jordan (19:25.481) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what we're talking about are these anachronistic rules that are based on nonsense from the 70s. But, yes, and we're talking about just getting rid of these mandates and not eliminating existing parking, you know, generally not severely restricting the ability of people to build parking in their new developments or with their businesses. But I think the other key is really showing people like, how much parking costs, how much space it takes up, what are the other impacts on things they care about, fiscal viability of their cities, the tax -based stuff, water runoff management or urban flooding and pollution, urban heat effects, just walkability, all these things come back to these rules. And what I found really effective lately is to just, you present that information, but in the context of, you know, I'll go look at, for example, bowling alleys. I'll draw a circle of a hundred miles around a city and find examples of bowling alley parking requirements, which are hilarious in themselves because it kind of shows you when they were written. And you'll find one per lane, two per lane, three per lane, four per lane, five per lane, six per lane, seven per lane, right? In just like an area around. And so it's like, what could be the difference between a bowler in this city? where they require two per lane and this one was seven or funeral homes. Like you'll, I, it's not uncommon to see one city require one parking space for 50 square feet, which is a pretty high requirement. You're talking the parking lot is going to need to be six to eight times bigger than the funeral home. And then another place will, will require only one per 500. So that's like a, you know, or, you know, like that's a pretty large difference. You know, 10, we'll find 10 to 12 times difference in. a city that's just 50 miles from another city. And I think that when people see that, that contrast, it really undermines the faith in like, why do these numbers exist? And their first reaction is, well, maybe we can just fix them. And you're like, no, like you can't, like just X them out and get working on the real work that it takes to repair your city, right? The parking mandates is just like... Tony Jordan (21:48.713) That's just clearing a hurdle. It doesn't actually change anything. That requires a developer -friendly zoning code, or it requires transportation management on the ground. But you're never going to get anywhere if these rules exist. Kevin K (22:06.072) Yeah, I was thinking about, and I think we may have talked briefly about this, but obviously, you know, Shoop's book, The High Cost of Free Parking is kind of like the gold standard for the field. It's a really, it's an incredible book. But I remember years before that, he wrote this little magazine article called Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong, which was maybe like three or four pages. But just that alone was such a devastating takedown of the stupidity of most minimum parking requirements and where they come from. And it's always wild to me that people think that those requirements are actually based in something real. Tony Jordan (22:48.169) Yeah, I mean, I have a slide that's called roughly right, precisely wrong based on that same concept. And it highlights this poor little town in Georgia, Woodbury, Georgia, that is really very small. And they have so many land uses with parking requirements and they have like, they're specific to two significant figures for things like, you know, hospital employees, like 1 .26 or 1 .72 for students. And then this place has two requirements. Like they have a separate land use requirement for parking for a hella port and a hella stop. Two, like it's different. Hell if I know what the difference is, right? And it's like, I like you point these out or North Carolina, when we went to CNU last year, we were looking at North Carolina cities because it was in, you know, it was in Charlotte. And there's all these parking requirements in cities in North Carolina for drive -in movie theaters. Like, and they literally are like, Kevin K (23:23.992) What is that? What the hell is that? Tony Jordan (23:46.569) one per speaker box. So it's like you're like telling a drive -in movie theater, which once again, no one's building them, that they have to have a parking space for every park. Like what is going on? One of my favorites is in Dallas, there is a parking requirement for sewage treatment plants. And it's one parking space per million gallons of capacity at the sewage treatment facility, which, and if you look at, Kevin K (24:12.264) my god. Tony Jordan (24:14.409) There's a sewage treatment facility. If you look at it on Google, it has this gigantic parking lot and there's like 20 cars in it because it's like it has like 300 million gallon capacity. So the parking lot is and this is the city telling it's who builds a sewage treatment plant, right? Like the city. But a water treatment plant in Dallas, like for drinking water, only requires two parking spaces. And you look at the you look at a satellite picture of the parking of the water treatment plant and there's like 20 spaces they didn't just build two. They built what they needed. Right. And so like this is really it's like. Kevin K (24:27.032) Yeah, no kidding. Tony Jordan (24:44.009) why are cities even saddling themselves with these requirements? It's insanity, right? Like something really went wrong in, you know, what in the urban planning profession and it just is kind of, we're trying to stop the bleeding and, you know, yeah. Kevin K (25:02.616) Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just hilarious, some of this stuff. When you detach yourself from it and you're just like, it's so, some of it's just so utterly ridiculous. But I think there's something you said that was really important there, which is like, you know, you're really, you're trying to just go about the business of like clearing a hurdle. So like you're not trying to say this is going to solve every problem. But what this is doing, you're trying to remove an impediment to. especially to more like walkable urban style development that really prevents a lot of good things from happening in cities all over the country. Tony Jordan (25:40.649) Right. I mean, it's it. I use an analogy sometimes like if you want to grow a garden, the garden in this case being like a walkable community, you can't go throw, you know, vegetable seeds in your lawn and expect it to work. You've got to remove the rocks and the weeds in the grass first. That's getting that's your parking mandate removal is just prepping the zone. You still have to do all the other stuff. You have to, you know, create the zoning code and you have to. manage on street parking so that it doesn't create spillover or whatever. So it's really a first step. The other great thing is that it's not just housing, right? Like this is a policy, one of the reasons I work on it. I can hardly find a better way to spend my time than one policy area that works on housing, transportation and climate, right? Like it's a piece of, if you have a climate action plan, it's not gonna work. with parking mandates. If you have a transportation plan to build more transit or get people to use other modes, it's not going to work if you have parking mandates. If you have a housing plan, it's not going to work if you have parking mandates. So this one thing, it doesn't fix everything, but it unlocks and makes your other plans actually gives them a fighting chance at success. Kevin K (26:58.2) So then how do you respond to, I mean, I can probably, I'm probably going to test like some of the arguments that people, that I hear all the time and I'm sure you hear them all the time too. but I'm just curious and it's good for the audience to kind of hear how you think about these things. But you know, one thing that I certainly hear a lot is, well, you can eliminate that, but people, people are still going to drive. So what's the point? You know, we live in a big city in a big region that's spread out and people, people drive. That's what they do. So, you know, that, and that seems to me like that's a common. objection that people have to removing some of those standards. Tony Jordan (27:31.561) Right, well, I mean, it's kind of ironic because your arguments are either it's not going to have an impact or it's going to be a disaster and it can't be both at the same time, right? So I think that's true. And to that I say, yes, the world is currently, most of our country is built for people who want to drive. And so on one hand, that should be comforting to the person who's worried about. I've got kids and I don't want to take them on the bus or, you know, my grandma likes to shop at this Walmart. Like the Walmart's still going to be there unless they just close it and build a bigger Walmart farther away, right? Like, I mean, they're still going to, these places still exist that people will drive to. Your house still has a parking space. So no one's asking you to change. We know that there's intense demand for a different way to live. That's why walkable communities are very expensive because... people want, there's not enough of them and people want to live in them. So I think like this just, it makes it possible to build these places. And then we'll see whether it's just consumer preference shows that, you know, people see these places and they want to move into them and we can build more of them or retrofit more of our communities to be like this way. Or frankly, there's a distinct possibility that we will be forced to make some decisions about not driving as much, you know, based on, you know, climate or just geometry issues of traffic. So like one way or the other, I think we have to come up with a solution. And this is, you know, it's just stop digging. First, the first thing is stop digging. And these parking mandates are just requiring everyone to dig the hole a little bit deeper every time they start a business or build a building. And, you know, so that's, I think that's one argument is, you know, well, if the demand is not there, then what do we have to lose by trying, you know, like these. the rules are just in the way of even trying to provide that thing that people seem to want. Kevin K (29:32.696) So another thing that I hear a lot, especially this is much more so like in urban communities, this is where these issues really come up more often anyway. You don't really find a ton of this discussion in a lot of our suburban communities. But I mean, there's some of that, but not a lot. But like in the parts of town where I live in the more urban part of Kansas City, one of the really common objections, let's say there's a large new apartment proposal or there's a commercial. There's a business that wants to go in and if they want to have no parking or very little parking, one of the objections as well, people are still going to drive and all they're going to do is they're just going to park up all the streets in front of my house in the neighborhood nearby. And they're just going to spill over into that. So you're really just making my life more miserable by taking parking away from our streets. Tony Jordan (30:25.449) Mm hmm. Yes. This is the spillover issue can be real, right? I mean, obviously, if you have successful businesses that have parking and they attract more people, since we know these numbers are incorrect, right? There's nothing that says a restaurant, the minimum ratio is actually providing enough parking for the customers or not. Right. I mean, so there's spillover anyway. But, you know, so there's one I would say. The. The solution to that is cities need to mind their own business when it comes to parking. They own the curb. The community owns the curb. It's a public asset or liability, depending on how you look at it. And, and, you know, if sure, if it's free or underpriced, then people will take advantage of that. So manager, you know, the city also knows when permits are coming in for new businesses or for new buildings and should be able to pretty readily anticipate that demand might increase in an area. and create a permit district or a meter district or some other management, which are great because they actually can return revenue to the community to help, you know, make things more walkable with more lighting or crosswalks and help people actually get to these places in other ways. I think that it's also what this gets to me really interesting is just like, I'm often asked like who opposes these reforms and why, and, and it's incumbents, right? Like incumbents, people who, already are using the business that doesn't have enough parking supposedly, right? Like if, hey, you want these ratios because supposedly they provide enough parking. So if you support them, provide the ratio for your own business, and then you don't have a problem. But no, you're using the on -street parking. You're using the asset, and you're worried that another business is going to come in and attract more customers than you do. That's a business issue. Or you know, you... want to park on the street, you know, or you're develop, you know, you're using the asset already that exists, you're using this thing. And so you want to moat. I think one of the things people think developers fund this work. and I wish they did, but the fact is, I don't think current, the developers that are making a lot of money or building a lot of projects, they usually are, they've evolved to exist in the ecosystem that includes parking. Tony Jordan (32:44.265) Do they really necessarily want someone else coming in that's got a more nimble business model that's going to compete with their buildings? I don't know. I think that's one of the reasons why some of this has taken longer is like, you know, you're competing with a status quo and everyone who exists, they've evolved to operate in status quo. And this is a disruptive change potentially. This could change, you know, how your main street works. And so I think there's a natural pushback there, but the... You know, the solutions are easy. We know how to manage parking. So like, if that's really your concern is just that there might be congestion on the curb. Well, we've got a solution for that, right? It's, yeah. Kevin K (33:27.96) Yeah, it's funny because I think about like my own neighborhood, which was largely built in the first two decades of the 20th century. And so it has that sort of a neighborhood main street and that there's a portion of the main street that is built with sort of classic American early 20th century buildings, you know, right up to the sidewalk, very popular. numbers of restaurants and everything else. And it's a really popular little area. And it's been popular for years and years. But on that same exact street, like if you wanted to build a new restaurant, the zoning would require a minimum of 10 spaces per thousand square feet, which would make it completely impossible to actually build what's there today. And there's this really funny disconnect that. we've talked about forever, which is we have these places that people obviously really love for very human reasons. It's great to be in a place where you can just like walk around and see other people and you can sit at a table and just enjoy the street life and activity. And so these places are extremely popular in most places where they exist, yet our rules and regulations don't allow you to build it again. Tony Jordan (34:52.137) Right. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's true. I show a picture of, you know, like of Main Street. I have a slide where I show a picture of Main Street and then just a shopping center. And like you can't this isn't I am not the first person to do this, but you count up the number of businesses in there and they're roughly the same number of businesses in a big shopping center as opposed to like one block of a Main Street. Of course, the bigger businesses are bigger, but partly that's because they have to they have to support because we don't allow. We don't allow localized commerce either. I mean, that's a whole big part is there's a lot of the talk is around residential parking requirements and allowing more infill housing, but we need a lot more infill commercial too, right? I mean, my friend Neil Heller, you know, with his accessory commercial units, like, why don't we allow these, like, if you think about trip reduction, cities will spend so much money to try and get someone to take the bus to go get their hair done, where if you allow someone to open a hair, you know, just. Kevin K (35:35.64) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (35:50.857) do hair in their basement or in their garage, you know, legally or open a little storefront, the person might just walk or ride a bike to that. You're reducing the trip for free. Kevin K (36:01.528) it out. So what is what's going on then? One of the things that you all do is you track what's happening nationally in terms of parking reform state by state. What are some of the most encouraging things that are happening across the country that you're seeing? Tony Jordan (36:16.041) Well, for one, I think we're just seeing more and more cities get rid of their parking mandates entirely or do large scale reforms. This is obviously, you know, just a drop in the bucket. Municipal, you know, we've got I think I was just looking at it yesterday and we're right around. There's like 70 or 71 cities that we know of in the United States that have gotten rid of their parking mandates citywide for all uses. Most recently, Tualatin, Oregon, I think was the most recent. when we've added to the list. So that's great because it shows other places that they can do it. It shows that the sky's not falling, there's momentum behind this, these cities are, you know, someone will say, well, we have, I was in La Crosse, I was talking to people in La Crosse, they said, well, we have snow. I said, well, you can talk to the people in Duluth or the people in Anchorage. They also have snow. You know, so there's, we're getting more and more comps. We finally just got a city in the center of the country in Colorado, like, you know, Longmont, Colorado just did it, so it's. Kevin K (37:13.08) Okay, good. Tony Jordan (37:13.705) It's great to see that momentum, because I think it emboldens people. And then that starts to trickle up into the statewide and regional planning areas where we're seeing the conversation start in, you know, Minnesota. They had people over parking act, which proposed to eliminate mandates statewide. Oregon has pretty strong reforms that are requiring. That's why we have so many cities with no parking mandates, because the state's kind of making requiring cities to make a choice between getting rid of their mandates or managing their off street parking. So I think that the encouraging thing is that the conversation is moving forward. The solutions are much less incremental at this point. There's a recognition that like we don't have time to mess around, you know, checking every couple of years. It takes so long to build things is one thing. It's like, you know, I tell people, it's like, you know, you're not going to see the impact of this for years. We don't have time to wait. So that's, I think that just the general awareness, all of these reforms then. create buzz or opportunity for buzz. And so just, you know, every time someone hears about this, there's an opportunity for another Tony Jordan to get hooked on the topic and get active in their local community. So like, you know, you hear about the city next door and maybe you're going to go down to planning commission next and start banging the drum around parking reform. Kevin K (38:35.672) What are some of the larger cities that have done dramatic reform? Tony Jordan (38:40.201) The largest in the US is Austin, which did it last year. In North America, Mexico City has no mandates. Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal is about to do so. San Francisco, in the United States, you got San Francisco. I'm trying to think of who's on the, St. Paul in Minneapolis. San Jose was, is a, is a large city that's done it. Portland has no parking mandates and Portland, because of our statewide rules, many of our suburbs are also starting to have no mandates. So we're starting to build a metro area that we'll have, which I think will be very useful to see how that interplays. Cause that's one thing, you know, Dallas could get rid of the parking mandates tomorrow, but you know, the Dallas Fort Worth metro area is such, or Los Angeles, you know, there's so many other cities that are requiring it and cars don't. car demand doesn't stop at the city border, right? So there's a bit of where everyone kind of needs to make a commitment together, you know, to not like, you can get rid of parking mandates in your downtown, but if all of your surrounding community is car dependent, it's going to be very hard to redevelop parking lots in your downtown because the demand is just going to be there. So I think like, you know, we're starting to, these larger areas will, will, will be helpful, but I, but it's also great to have smaller cities get rid of mandates too, because. That's the majority of cities in the United States are smaller places that aren't megopolises. Kevin K (40:13.56) Are you able to track like winds that come from the policy change at all, like in terms of maybe development activity, other stuff that would have happened, would not have happened without the reform? Tony Jordan (40:26.161) Starting to, so some of our partners like Sightline, Katie Gould at Sightline who covers parking the best. She covers this in the Northwest and in some other places. We just actually are, we have a blog post that's about to come out tomorrow based on a Twitter thread where someone was highlighting changes in Anchorage. One of the issue here is, you know, many of these, I mean, when we talk about 70 cities, There were about 15 cities at the end of 2020 in the United States, maybe 13, maybe it's 13, somewhere, you know, not many more than 10 that had gotten rid of their mandates citywide. So we've, you know, had about 55 cities do this reform just in the last four years. Seeing what happens, I mean, there are, Katie Gould has shown some great examples of, you know, projects that, you know, immediately when the reform has gone in. will go in and submit a redesign that doesn't punch a hole through the middle of the building to access the parking lot or adds a certain number of apartments or homes. There was great examples out of Fayetteville, right? When Fayetteville was an early adopter of no commercial mandates, they need to catch up on the residential side. But, you know, where buildings were getting reused all of a sudden that had been vacant for many years. So that's going to be, we're trying to track that. We're a small and growing organization and so capacity to do that. But, Those stories are the critical ones, I think, to show people the benefit of doing this. Kevin K (42:02.584) What about anecdotally from Portland, which you're most familiar with, where you didn't have mandates and you did have mandates and then you went back to not having mandates? Have you seen some good wins there? Tony Jordan (42:13.897) Well, I mean, in a way, the best example from Portland is in the opposite direction, right? We had, as I mentioned, buildings going up on this division street that had 30, 40, 50 apartments. They were very numbers, right? You look at the permits, the number of apartments being built, and they were all over the place between 30 and 80, right? What we did in Portland was we instituted a When they took a step back, they said, okay, you can build up to 30 units with no parking. But if you build 31, you have to have a 0 .2 parking ratio, one for every five apartments, which is relatively low, but it was retroactive to the whole building. So you had no parking to 30 units. And then the 31st apartment, you had to have six parking spaces on site. And what did we see? No one's gonna study on this, but I looked back, you know, you saw a haircut. All of a sudden, a bunch of apartments had exactly. 30 units. I think this marginal impact, it's harder to quantify, but I think honestly, the biggest thing is if you think of every apartment that's been built in the United States over the last 70 years, and you know, they might still, even if you say they built the exact same amount of parking that exists right now, if developers were allowed to just max out what was practical apartment -wise on that site with that same amount of parking, we'd have 10, 20, you know, five to 20 new apartments. in every apartment building in the United States. We would have no housing crisis if we had just let that happen, even with parking being built. So I think those marginal increases where you're just adding five or 10 apartments in a building that would have had a lower number because they couldn't meet the parking requirement, that's kind of the invisible benefit, I think, that is harder to quantify but is already, I'm sure, taking place, right? Cities with no mandates. They still build with parking, but they build a bit more housing. And that's, you know, that's important, you know, is to build. And then over time, maybe they start building a lot more housing and a lot less parking. But initially right away, you know, you might just add two or three more units because you can, or you might add bedrooms on the units because a lot of times the parking requirements are based on bedrooms. So you're going to build studios because they have a lower parking requirement. You know, I mean, I know there's many factors to layouts, but that's one of them sometimes. Kevin K (44:41.752) Yeah, it seems like it's probably a classic like hockey stick, you know, adjustment curve where it'd be really slow and minimal for a number of years potentially, or just kind of modest. But then there comes a point where there's an inflection and other things, other things that don't really work well right now, you know, like better public transit, better bike, but just better alternative transportation all of a sudden starts to work more. And, and you probably get more things that are within a walking distance that you didn't have before. What do you say to people who say, well, you know, the parking requirements really don't matter because the investors, the lenders are going to require a certain amount anyway. And that's really where the stumbling block is. What do you, what do you say to that argument? Tony Jordan (45:28.585) I mean, I think if we're talking about apartments with zero parking, sure. I mean, I think that's, you know, it took, it took 10 years for Portland to find a developer who was willing to build a large, a mid -size apartment building with no parking. Once they did and it rented, then the investors were very happy to do it. So some of it is just the market's not proven. This is what I mentioned before, the inertia of, of just these people have business models. They have relationships with bankers, they have funding streams, people understand the product and so they know what to invest in. You're trying to change that. To build an apartment building with much less parking requires not just the developer but brokers. There's a lot of players that have to align. So in a way, yes. Now the fact is that we can't even start working on fixing those other problems that the parking mandate still exists. So like, if you know, like it's absolutely worth it. They're just overhead on your city too. I mean, like they just cause city staff spend time on this that they could be spending approving other permits. So like get rid of them and you know, if nothing changes, then nothing changed. But if we are actually then can, can be successful in, you know, I think a lot of the work like incremental development Alliance or other people who are, you know, trying to, you know, there's a whole set of education and building capacity for building these kinds, remembering how to build these kinds of communities. And so that's going to take a little while to build that capacity. But if we haven't prepped the garden, once again, that can't take root. That can't happen. Kevin K (47:12.792) You know, it's always so funny also when I think about like the politics of some of these things and the politics of this issue. I mean, you're talking about something which is essentially removing a requirement from your local government, which is typically thought of as like a conservative political approach. And yet almost all the reform happening is in blue states and blue cities, which is just kind of bizarre. I always think about it, it shows how upside down a lot of people's thinking is in regards to these issues. So, I mean, that being said, obviously, you know, a lot of the places you've mentioned, you know, are pretty dyed in the wool blue places politically. What are you seeing as any kind of positive trend in more like conservative or red states as well? Tony Jordan (48:08.553) It surely is confusing, right? Why some people would support these regulations. I think there's a bit of just team opposition that goes into this. Whoever proposes the policy first might receive opposition. Yeah, I think some of the reason why these reforms took root first in... Kevin K (48:23.832) Yeah, sure. Kevin K (48:28.216) I've got to be against it. They're my enemy. I've got to be against it no matter what. Tony Jordan (48:38.761) in liberal, more liberal or blue places was, well, that happens to be where the housing crisis hit first. There also are, there are very good reasons for every one of every political stripe to support parking mandates, but there may be more reasons if you are politically, if you're, you know, liberally aligned, you might believe, you know, you might be more concerned about climate change, right? And you might be more concerned about transit access. So those issues tack on to the, you know, you know, general market problem. and they give you a little more reason. There's more coalition members. I think, you know, now that said, Anchorage is an example where, you know, it was a mixed city council that had broad political support from both conservatives and liberals. You know, there are a lot of Midwest cities that are doing this that are not necessarily very liberal. I think it's just the messaging is taking a little... it's a little harder, you know, because of just coding to break through, but this should definitely be an issue that we can win on across the political spectrum. I think it's just, it has to be intentional and continue that education around what we're actually talking about here. And to some degree it finds out if people are really for real about what they say about, you know, markets or business, you know, activity. I... Kevin K (50:01.4) Yeah. Tony Jordan (50:06.121) If you're in chamber of commerce or something, I had a woman complained to me. She came up to me in Chuck Morrone in Minneapolis and St. Paul and said, you know, I'm from the such and such Avenue business association. I said, and she was opposing the bill in, in, in Minnesota. And I said, do you, does your association just, it only supports existing businesses, right? Like you don't care about entrepreneurship. Do you? And, and, you know, she was like, well, of course, but I was like, no, of course you wouldn't. I will say one group that is on the. like kind of more conservative side of the spectrum. You know, some like I went to a conference in Arizona, a one day symposium that was about like doing business in America. And it was from like kind of like a, you know, economic, you know, libertarian side. And some of those folks really understand the parking mandates. Like they get that this and, and the like Institute for Justice is like they work not only on parking mandates, but just other barriers to people being economically free, like, you know, licensure requirements for hair braiding and things. It's one of those things that kind of fits into this, you know, once you see what this is being used for, which is often manipulation, right? Cities want to keep the parking mandates in place so they can sometimes just have more control over what businesses get to open or where they get to open. So. Yeah, exactly. And no one wants to give up their power, right? Like, that's one of the reasons it exists is because. Kevin K (51:26.04) Yeah, or leverage for negotiations. Tony Jordan (51:34.377) Yeah, people use them to decide where a restaurant can go as opposed to, it's not really about parking, right? Because they'll grant the variance somewhere else. They just don't want to have the bar next to where they like to hang out. Kevin K (51:50.072) Well, I mean, I do notice that on your map, Missouri and Kansas are not represented. So I hope that at some point we are within the next couple of years, we're working on some stuff to try to get us there locally. But yeah, it's a big hole. You're right. That's right. Branson eliminated theirs. Branson, interestingly enough, also has no building code. Or they were like, Missouri was one of the few states. Tony Jordan (51:59.817) What? Branson, Branson's got no mandates, right? Kevin K (52:18.712) God, my memory is going to fail me now because this has been a few years since I've thought about this issue. But for a long time, they were one of a handful of states that had no statewide building code adopted. And so cities and counties had to actually opt in to adopt one. And Branson did not have one for forever for a long time. So it's pretty interesting. Tony Jordan (52:28.329) huh. Tony Jordan (52:40.297) I think we're going to see a lot more activity. There's a lot of cities too. I know this isn't, you know, there's cities that have like Norman, Oklahoma is not on the map as a red dot because they maintain parking mandates for frat houses and some other housing alignments. So we're, we're pretty strict about who gets to be on the, on the dot. And, but there are a lot of places that are, that have done significant reforms. Hopefully we can tell more of those stories and highlight that. We just hired a policy director, Dan O 'Hara guess from, from strong towns. Kevin K (52:56.888) Okay. All right. Kevin K (53:08.312) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (53:10.345) And we have an intern working this summer on kind of helping us to get more of an idea of where we can have a bigger impact in providing education and resources to the people on the ground. So I'm very excited about the potential for, you know, to see these. Right now reforms happen. Sometimes we know, like we knew Birmingham was going to, was working on getting rid of their mandates, but then other cities pop up where we haven't even had any contact. They might use our product, our maps or our resources, but. I wanna know, I wanna really, like I wanna know where the heat is coming from next so we can really, you know, hype it up and celebrate it. Kevin K (53:47.224) Yeah, I know. It's going to create like an impossible test for you since there's so many municipalities around the country. But there are those like, you know, the one I'm in, in Kansas City, Missouri, we have actually had some pretty good, I would say incremental reform at the city government level. And especially in Oregon, so it was passed last year that really is very helpful for infill residential development, sort of missing middle scale that basically just waived all parking requirements for that, which was nice. But we still have pretty onerous stuff in other parts of the city or other parts of the code. So it's very much piecemeal. Tony Jordan (54:27.561) Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously there's statewide reform progress and I know people are mixed, you know, that's tough because the cities want their local control. I think like, obviously if we're going to really deal with this problem, you know, that's probably necessary in a lot of places. It helps certainly to have a number of cities though, get rid of your mandates initially so they can be examples. And even I think anything that requires cities, I like it like if you can just get a city to open up and. and actually examine what these are and reckon with it. Shoop says one of the best pieces of advice he has to like someone who wants to get their city to get rid of mandates is take that paper, the pseudoscience of parking reform and, or pseudoscience of parking mandates, sorry, whoops. And, and give it to, you know, have a, have a planning commissioner, a city council person direct the staff to read this paper and prepare a memo as to why it's correct or wrong, right? Like, Kevin K (55:19.896) Hmm. Tony Jordan (55:20.393) I like it until like you go in your garage and you open up an old cooler and sometimes there's something really bad that you forgot in there. These mandates are like a fish that someone left in a cooler for 60 years, right? Like it's bad. You open it up and if you can force people to actually defend it, like I think that's what we need to do is say, okay, you don't want to get rid of these mandates, then it's on you to tell me why that they are correct. And so if we can shine some light on it, I think we'll start to see, you know, cities. in other communities get rid of them more readily because, you know, no one's going to want to step up and defend them anymore. Kevin K (55:59.928) It's pretty hard to defend. So when I think about Shoup and the work that he's done, especially if I go back to Pasadena, which is one of his favorite examples he loves to use in downtown Pasadena, I think about as much about parking management as anything and sort of balancing the on -street and off -street needs and figuring out the economics of it so it actually makes sense. How much of the parking management side do you all get into or track as part of your work? Tony Jordan (56:35.241) Well, one of our first things we ever put together was a or one of the first products we released that we actually are very proud of is a guidebook on parking benefit districts. It's a handbook for activists, right? And so this was written by one of our first interns, Evan Kimler. And it's like, I felt there was a need to. You have parking in the city, you have high cost free parking, you have, you know, various papers, but they're not. Kevin K (56:45.432) Okay. Tony Jordan (57:03.113) necessarily accessible or activism oriented. So we do promote parking. Parking benefit districts are a great idea. It's there's not it's such a synergistic thing. You know, you charge for parking, which would which helps to manage the demand and then you reinvest, which helps drive the demand lower. And then ideally, some point in the future, you don't have much more revenue because no one's parking, but you don't need it because you spent the money on making it more walkable. Great. We promote that. I talk about parking management every time I give a lecture. It's harder to track. We're starting to do this. We were just talking with some folks at IPMI, like, where are the data sets for this? How do we know? And so trying to figure out where there's good examples of data -driven parking management and good examples of permits. It's also a problem, potentially a problem. A lot of states have rules that prohibit cities from you know, actively manage their curb, maybe in a best practice. Like they don't allow them to, you know, charge parking for people with disability placards, which is leads to a lot of placard abuse and makes streets unavailable for people. Or they limit them from using demand -based pricing for permits. The permits can only be cost recovery, or they limit what they can spend money on, you know, from parking. Like you maybe you can only spend it on. parking garages, or maybe you can only spend it on, I mean, transit's not a bad thing, but San Francisco, I think, spends a lot of its net revenue from SF Park on transit. That's great, but there's also other things that maybe could be more impactful at a local level. So I think that's one case where I think we need to find out what the lay of the land is and then really start to highlight these examples. It's a harder political press because... Charging for things is not popular. But I think the other thing is that I think cities a lot of times don't go far enough. So they charge you, but you're not getting a value, right? If you paid a park and you still can't find a place to park, you're not happy. If you paid a park and you had a good experience, you know, that you're not, of course, I don't want to pay for anything in my life. I don't want to pay for a cup of coffee, but if I pay for one and it's bad, I'm upset. If I didn't pay for one and it's bad, you know. Tony Jordan (59:27.305) I'm not as much. So I think like once you're charging, go all the way and charge enough that there's an open space on every block, right? Like Shoop says, you know, maybe 85 % or whatever it is so that someone driving down the street can find a space, even if they have to pay for it. Like we're willing to pay for things as American consumers. We do it all the time. Kevin K (59:46.168) Yeah. So it does seem to me like this kind of work is the sort of work that developers and investors and lenders would want to support. But you say you're not really seeing much of that at this stage? Tony Jordan (59:59.945) Yeah, I think that, I mean, the funding in general for this is tough because we're a national organization. A lot of people are locally focused, a lot of developers, right? They're locally focused. So they want to see, like they're more concerned about what's going on in their community. And if they either, you know, if they have parking mandates, you know, like we can't promise we're not an organization that comes in and drops people out of a helicopter to like, you know, to work on something. We're helping to build just a national environment and movement to make these policies happen better. So, and I think once again, the developers that make a lot of money right now make it in the current regulatory environment, right? Like that's the end the ones. So we need the small scale developers as they start to, or the incremental or the ones that get it, as they start to maybe prove this point, maybe we'll see some people paying it forward. Kevin K (01:00:45.848) Do you know? Tony Jordan (01:00:58.377) you know, on what it is. But I recognize like, you know, yeah, the people who get it, they're just trying to get their, they can't build the projects that will make them the money because they're, you know, they're not legal yet. Kevin K (01:00:59.256) Yeah. Yeah. Kevin K (01:01:12.216) Yeah, that is an interesting twist. It probably is more of like the smaller and mid -sized developers who stand to benefit the most from parking reform. The large ones are going to negotiate their projects no matter what anyway. It's a different animal. But the smaller and mid -sized ones are less likely to have the kind of extra cash sitting around to support these efforts. Tony Jordan (01:01:23.881) Right. Tony Jordan (01:01:33.769) Right. I mean, and I'm not saying that the bigger developers, they don't fight the reforms at least generally. They're just not, they're not at contrary. I think this is, we find this across the whole housing zoning reform spectrum. You know, everyone thinks that it's developer, you know, developers financing this and it's, it's not, it's, I mean, mostly it's not even finance. Most of this work is done by people who care passionately about the place where they live or the, there's the, the future of, you know, for their children. And they're driven by that passion. And we're just all trying, you know, the more we can fund these endeavors, they have a ability to have a larger capacity because not everyone can, you know, can spend their time on these things without being paid. So I think, you know, I think the awareness is getting there, you know, and eventually, you know, I think we'll start to see more resources. put towards this, you know, some of it is just similar to when it took a lot of people. People wanted to see a building work in Portland before they would build more without parking. People want to see this as a viable organizing area. They want to see the successes coming and then, you know, then the, then they'll invest in it. Right. You kind of kind of prove, prove the point first on it when you're doing something a different way. Kevin K (01:02:58.2) Yeah. Well, Tony, this has been great. I really appreciate the conversation. Before we wrap up, I have to know, so how many Don Schupe posters or bobbleheads do you have? Tony Jordan (01:03:10.825) Those things don't really exist, unfortunately. I don't have nearly the collection of parking paraphernalia as I'd like. I've got an Andy Singer cartoon, you know, No Exit, that's about parking that I got. I have a weird poster on my wall here that's of a mural someone did on a garage door in Seattle. It's Jesus. Kevin K (01:03:14.264) I'm out. Tony Jordan (01:03:36.521) trying to find a parking space because there's a church across the street from this person's house and the people would park in their driveway. So they made this mural.

DESCRIPTIONThis episode picks up where E109: A Conversation with Dan Mathers and Donald Shoup about Parking Technology, Part 2 left off. Dan Mathers, President and CEO of eleven-X, sits down with Donald Shoup to discuss how parking technology plays a role in parking reform.SPONSORSThis episode is brought to you by Eleven-X. Take control of your parking with eXactpark, a smart parking solution that provides real-time occupancy monitoring at the stall level and powerful data insights. eXactpark enables drivers to quickly and easily find available parking while helping organizations balance their parking space use, better manage the curbside, reduce congestion and offer optimized programs and policies for a better parking experience for all. Learn more at eleven-x.com.This episode is brought to you by Parker Technology, the customer experience solution of choice for the parking industry. Our solution puts a virtual ambassador in every lane, to help parking guests pay and get on their way in under a minute. Whether you utilize our customer service team, your team in conjunction with our software platform, or a combination of both, we help you capture revenue, provide better customer service, enable your staff to focus on higher priority tasks, and keep traffic moving. With the Parker Technology solution, you'll also enjoy access to real-time call data and recordings. Learn more at parkertechnology.com/parkingpodcast and subscribe to our podcast “Harder Than It Looks: Parking Uncovered.”This episode is brought to you by PAVE Mobility. PAVE Mobility is the leader in automated parking enforcement. PAVE installs fixed LPR cameras at no charge to you so PAVE can capture parkers who did not make a payment and send them a notice in the mail. Learn why so many asset owners and operators are switching over to PAVE at pavemobility.com or email me at isaiah.mouw@pavemobility.com.This episode is brought to you by Amteck. Amteck is an electrical, technologies, and fire safety contractor with offices and teams positioned across the Mid-South. Whether your parking structure needs new electrical panels and EV charger updates, CCTV and parking sensor installations, or inspections of a fire suppression system, Amteck can handle it for you. They bring honesty and a friendly attitude to every job. Learn more at amteck.com.This episode is brought to you by NoiseVu Audio Security. NoiseVu installs discreet security technology in your parking facilities designed to identify different sounds of importance such as glass breaking, gunshots, fights, catalytic converter theft and more to notify your security staff immediately. Learn why more and more parking facilities are installing NoiseVu to improve their safety at an incredibly low price at http://www.noisevu.com.WEBSITES AND RESOURCEShttps://www.parkingcast.com/https://eleven-x.com/https://www.helpmeparker.com/parkingpodcast/https://pavemobility.com/https://www.amteck.com/https://www.parkalytics.com/https://www.noisevu.com/http://www.parkingmerchantprocessing.com/https://www.parkingcast.com/pcaMERCHCheck out some of our awesome parking themed t-shirts and other merch at parkingcast.com/swag.MUSEUMCheck out some of our artifacts from the world's first parking museum at parkingcast.com/museum.

Over the past few years, you've probably heard the term “walkability” thrown out. For those who have lived in big cities, this is a common factor to use when deciding where to live or work. If you can catch a quick bus or walk to the office, the grocery store, restaurants, or a movie theater, there's a fair chance you'll pay more for where you live. But, most real estate investors aren't thinking about this, and their ignorance could cost them. Jeff Speck, city planner and writer, is on the show to discuss how walkability, smart urban planning, and intentional property design can help you make much more money while improving the lives of your tenants and neighbors. Jeff has seen time and time again how smart urban planning leads to higher home appreciation and rents and a safer, happier community. The problem? Most of us are stuck in car-reliant American suburbs with little walkability and lacking public transportation. After hearing this episode, you'll easily be able to spot the properties that will grow faster in value due to smart city planning. So, before you go out and buy your next property, make sure it aligns with Jeff's four components of walkability because if it does, you could have a valuable property on your hands that most other investors won't even notice! In This Episode We Cover: Walkability explained and why this is such a crucial factor in home and rent prices The four components of walkability and how to ensure your property fits The huge portion of Americans who want walkable properties and communities Mixed-use development and why Americans want more than big yards and big houses Urban design trends to pay attention to that could change the real estate landscape How to get your city leaders to take the steps to building more walkable communities  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Agent BiggerPockets Bootcamps Join BiggerPockets for FREE On The Market Join the Future of Real Estate Investing with Fundrise Connect with Other Investors in the “On The Market” Forums Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Dave's BiggerPockets Profile Dave's Instagram BiggerPockets' Instagram Connect with Jeff Jeff's Instagram Jeff's LinkedIn Jeff's X/Twitter Jeff's Website Books Mentioned in the Show: Walkable City by Jeff Speck Walkable City Rules by Jeff Speck Suburban Nation by Andrés Duany The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs Homelessness is a Housing Problem by Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup   (00:00) Intro (01:07) Why We Need “Walkability” (07:32) Americans WANT Walkable Spaces (09:49) Bringing Back Walkable Cities (15:19) Profit Potential to Look For (19:33) Will This Increase Affordability? (25:13) Urban Design Trends to Watch (33:01) What Investors Should Do Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/on-the-market-210 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Shoup, UCLA professor of urban planning and expert on parking policy, joins Ava Johnson to discuss his career, passion for parking and advice for UCLA students.

DESCRIPTIONDan Mathers, President and CEO of eleven-X, sits down with Donald Shoup to discuss how parking technology plays a role in parking reform.SPONSORSThis episode is brought to you by Eleven-X. Take control of your parking with eXactpark, a smart parking solution that provides real-time occupancy monitoring at the stall level and powerful data insights. eXactpark enables drivers to quickly and easily find available parking while helping organizations balance their parking space use, better manage the curbside, reduce congestion and offer optimized programs and policies for a better parking experience for all. Learn more at eleven-x.com.This episode is brought to you by Parker Technology, the customer experience solution of choice for the parking industry. Our solution puts a virtual ambassador in every lane, to help parking guests pay and get on their way in under a minute. Whether you utilize our customer service team, your team in conjunction with our software platform, or a combination of both, we help you capture revenue, provide better customer service, enable your staff to focus on higher priority tasks, and keep traffic moving. With the Parker Technology solution, you'll also enjoy access to real-time call data and recordings. Learn more at parkertechnology.com/parkingpodcast and subscribe to our podcast “Harder Than It Looks: Parking Uncovered.”This episode is brought to you by PAVE Mobility. PAVE Mobility is the leader in automated parking enforcement. PAVE installs fixed LPR cameras at no charge to you so PAVE can capture parkers who did not make a payment and send them a notice in the mail. Learn why so many asset owners and operators are switching over to PAVE at pavemobility.com or email me at isaiah.mouw@pavemobility.com.This episode is brought to you by Amteck. Amteck is an electrical, technologies, and fire safety contractor with offices and teams positioned across the Mid-South. Whether your parking structure needs new electrical panels and EV charger updates, CCTV and parking sensor installations, or inspections of a fire suppression system, Amteck can handle it for you. They bring honesty and a friendly attitude to every job. Learn more at amteck.com.This episode is brought to you by NoiseVu Audio Security. NoiseVu installs discreet security technology in your parking facilities designed to identify different sounds of importance such as glass breaking, gunshots, fights, catalytic converter theft and more to notify your security staff immediately. Learn why more and more parking facilities are installing NoiseVu to improve their safety at an incredibly low price at http://www.noisevu.com.WEBSITES AND RESOURCEShttps://www.parkingcast.com/https://eleven-x.com/https://www.helpmeparker.com/parkingpodcast/https://pavemobility.com/https://www.amteck.com/https://www.parkalytics.com/https://www.noisevu.com/http://www.parkingmerchantprocessing.com/https://www.parkingcast.com/pcaMERCHCheck out some of our awesome parking themed t-shirts and other merch at parkingcast.com/swag.MUSEUMCheck out some of our artifacts from the world's first parking museum at parkingcast.com/museum.

News: The NYC Deliverista minimum wage, and how it may reduce bicyclist fatalities. 2:13 The irony of drivers waiting patiently at Christmas Light Displays, with Associate Director of Data Core at Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences, Bella Chu. 8:40 The irony of drivers waiting patiently at In-n-Out, with Peter Flax, journalist and former Editor in Chief of Bicycling Magazine. 19:59 The irony of the High Cost of Free Parking with its author, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA, Donald Shoup. With Don Ward (rebroadcast portion). 38:17

In this episode of ON CITIES, host Carie Penabad engages in a compelling conversation with Distinguished Professor and author Donald Shoup, exploring the profound impacts of parking on city design. Shoup delves into his three fundamental rules of parking, unveiling the transformative outcomes that emerge when cities embrace his policies. The conversation illuminates how parking reforms may be the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to improve city life, protect the environment and promote social justice. Tune in on Friday, December 8th at 11:00 AM EST, 8:00 AM PST on the Voice American Variety Channel and listen to all previous episodes on Apple iTune, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/4119/on-cities

In this episode of ON CITIES, host Carie Penabad engages in a compelling conversation with Distinguished Professor and author Donald Shoup, exploring the profound impacts of parking on city design. Shoup delves into his three fundamental rules of parking, unveiling the transformative outcomes that emerge when cities embrace his policies. The conversation illuminates how parking reforms may be the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to improve city life, protect the environment and promote social justice. Tune in on Friday, December 8th at 11:00 AM EST, 8:00 AM PST on the Voice American Variety Channel and listen to all previous episodes on Apple iTune, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/4119/on-cities

This week's SGV Connect focuses on two different parking programs in Pasadena. As the city closes in on approving its Strategic Parking Plan, we welcome retired UCLA economics professor and parking pricing guru Donald Shoup. Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking which is still considered essential reading for urban planners decades after its original publication. He was also involved when Pasadena first considered variable parking prices for its Playhouse District. As you can imagine, he has a lot to say. Our second interview is with Tashera Taylor, Melody McNulty, and Catherine Cheung of Foothill Unity Center. Foothill Unity is currently piloting a safe parking program in a church lot in Pasadena. For those of you that don't know, safe parking is a program where people who are living in their car can apply for space to park every night in a safe environment where they have access to running water, food and social services. The trio outlines Foothill's program, how they plan to grow, and the important social program and relief that has developed for parkers taking part in their program. SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.” Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.    

Few things shape the look and economics of our communities more than parking requirements. Unfortunately, most villages, towns and cities write their requirements to produce the exact opposite of the communities they want to encourage. Myles Dannhausen Jr. talks to UCLA professor and author Donald Shoup about why parking minimums hurt communities and how thinking differently about parking can help businesses, ease congestion and help pay for other services.

Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like it's never enough.  Slate's Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse. In this episode, we're going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. We'll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape—and see what might fix it. This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate's executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to: Jane Wilberding, Rachel Weinberger, Donald Shoup, Andrés Duany, Robert Davis, Micah Davis, Christy Milliken, Fletcher Isacks, Victor Benhamou, and Nina Pareja.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Even better, tell your friends.) If you're a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You'll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like it's never enough.  Slate's Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse. In this episode, we're going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. We'll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape—and see what might fix it. This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate's executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to: Jane Wilberding, Rachel Weinberger, Donald Shoup, Andrés Duany, Robert Davis, Micah Davis, Christy Milliken, Fletcher Isacks, Victor Benhamou, and Nina Pareja.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Even better, tell your friends.) If you're a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You'll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like it's never enough.  Slate's Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse. In this episode, we're going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. We'll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape—and see what might fix it. This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate's executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to: Jane Wilberding, Rachel Weinberger, Donald Shoup, Andrés Duany, Robert Davis, Micah Davis, Christy Milliken, Fletcher Isacks, Victor Benhamou, and Nina Pareja.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Even better, tell your friends.) If you're a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You'll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like it's never enough.  Slate's Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse. In this episode, we're going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. We'll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape—and see what might fix it. This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate's executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to: Jane Wilberding, Rachel Weinberger, Donald Shoup, Andrés Duany, Robert Davis, Micah Davis, Christy Milliken, Fletcher Isacks, Victor Benhamou, and Nina Pareja.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Even better, tell your friends.) If you're a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You'll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like it's never enough.  Slate's Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse. In this episode, we're going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. We'll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape—and see what might fix it. This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate's executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to: Jane Wilberding, Rachel Weinberger, Donald Shoup, Andrés Duany, Robert Davis, Micah Davis, Christy Milliken, Fletcher Isacks, Victor Benhamou, and Nina Pareja.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Even better, tell your friends.) If you're a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You'll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parking is at the heart of every fight about how we build our cities and towns, with effects that go far beyond transportation. Minimum parking requirements  — laws that dictate how many parking spaces are required for various types of buildings and businesses — make housing more expensive, raise the price of goods and services and exacerbate sprawl, making congestion and the climate crisis much, much worse. Thankfully, a movement is afoot to end parking minimums, inspired by the work of Donald Shoup. Shoup, the Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA's Department of Urban Planning, is the author of the 2005 book The High Cost of Free Parking. It's an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand the problems with parking. Professor Shoup — aka the Shoup Dogg — joins us for a spirited conversation about how to win what he calls “the war on parking subsidies.” This episode is sponsored by Cleverhood. Receive 15% off anything in the Cleverhood store using the special coupon code in this episode. Good for a limited time only!  Support The War on Cars on Patreon and receive exclusive access to ad-free versions of all new episodes, Patreon-only bonus content and free stickers! Buy The War on Cars merch in our store. LINKS: Learn all about Donald Shoup at ShoupDogg.com. Read The High Cost of Free Parking. Join The Parking Reform Network and end parking requirements where you live. Donald Shoup gets animated on Adam Ruins Everything. This episode was produced by Doug Gordon, edited by Ali Lemer, and recorded by Josh Wilcox of the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Our logo was designed by Dani Finkel of Crucial D Designs.  TheWarOnCars.org

Donald Shoup has been the nation's leading voice on parking requirements, how parking shapes our cities, and the many problems embeded in the planning profession regarding parking. This episode explores that topic and then some, resulting in an episode that not only left us informed, but also with a headache from laughter. Disclaimer*  There is discussion regarding massage parlors and adult establishments that were not intended to be offensive to any of the happenings within them but rather meant to demonstrate the absurdity of parking regulations.Check out our Facebook page and YouTube Channel for more episodes and announcements.

India Policy Watch: State Capacity, the Smart Parking EditionInsights on domestic policy issues— Pranay KotasthanePublic policy is all around us; observing the same public space over time can reveal much about public policy, implementation, and state capacity. So, I'll try something different today. I will narrate the story of a parking policy reform, which I've observed closely over the last couple of years. In it are lessons for government contracting, deployment of technology, and public choice. Drop a reply if this story resonates with you or if you have other such anecdata in mind. The Pre-reform SituationMG Road is a busy thoroughfare in Bengaluru's Central Business District. Well-known shops, pubs, restaurants, and offices line the road. As you can imagine, many office-goers and business owners commute to MG Road and park their vehicles next to the curb. On weekdays, finding a vacant parking space after 9 am is a sure-shot sign of divine intervention. Even though curbside parking is not chargeable nominally, scarcity causes Coasian transfers to originate. An informal cohort of unauthorised Parking Marshalls emerges. These marshalls help vehicle users negotiate parking in return for a fee. After multiple complaints about this “rent-seeking”, the city government puts up free parking boards and demarcates parking bays for two-wheelers and four-wheelers.A reduction in the real price of parking leads to increased demand. Office-goers rush towards the city centre earlier than usual. The threshold beyond which parking became an ordeal moves up to 8.30 am, after which people have to park about half a kilometre away in a designated paid parking. And since the Traffic Police have no capacity to enforce parking rules except once in a moon, you would usually encounter double-parked vehicles on MG Road, usually cabs. Some shops even employ valets to double-park customers' cars, which are slid into vacant parking slots as soon as they become available. The motorable road width decreases because of these double-parked vehicles. It is quite a chaos. The Smart Parking ReformThe paid parking reform had been mooted on several occasions but wasn't politically palatable. Finally, the city government bit the bullet after the first COVID-19 wave. BBMP —the city municipal corporation—realised that its tax revenue sources had thinned. And with an ongoing hoarding ban and a newly launched GST, revenue generation options had narrowed further. That's when the Overton Window for paid parking opened up. Given the lack of state capacity, BBMP doesn't usually do parking enforcement itself. So it enters into a public-private partnership in which one company Central Parking Services (CPS), is granted a contract for parking on ten major roads in the city's Central Business District for ten years. Reports suggest that BBMP expected Rs 31.56 crore annually through this arrangement. To prevent corruption, BBMP employs technology. Curbside parking spots are clearly marked and numbered. Sensors are installed on each slot to identify the presence or absence of a vehicle. Customers can book a parking slot on arrival via an app and pay seamlessly through UPI/card/or wallet. Parking kiosks are also installed on footpaths for people who don't have the phone app. To encourage digital payments, cash payments are made costlier by 16.6%, i.e., Rs 30 in cash grants parking permission for 50 minutes, while the same amount paid digitally allows you to book a parking slot for 60 minutes. For a detailed account, see this Deccan Herald report. To help people transition, parking charges are waived for the first week of operations. Thereafter, cars have to pay Rs 30 per hour.Now, guess what would have happened? Can you anticipate the unintended consequences?Post-reform observationsPricing a resource according to its scarcity leads to a more efficient resource allocation. We saw that scarcity principle play out here. Soon enough, you could find a parking slot at any time of the day. The contractor employed several uniformed parking marshalls to prevent double-parking and unauthorised use. The same road you saw above now started looking as below:The story doesn't end here, though. It's not as if parking requirements are this elastic in the central business district, and it's not as if the city has reliable public transport options. What really happened was the displacement of parked vehicles from MG Road to a nearby residential road and a parallel thoroughfare. To avoid paying the parking fee, people started parking vehicles on other roads, sometimes right under “No Parking” signs. These infractions were uncommon earlier as these roads were patrolled by traffic police vehicles. But with the enforcement contracted out to a company in the surrounding area, perhaps the incentive for the Traffic Police to patrol the area decreased, as public choice theory would predict. And so, while the parking situation on MG Road improved, other neighbouring roads became free parking lots, causing congestion and unchecked traffic rule violations. As for MG Road, the “smart” parking didn't remain smart for long. The sensors for most parking slots stopped working soon. The app and the kiosks showed a parking slot as" “empty” if you parked a vehicle there. At other times, it showed unpaid bills of previous customers. On one occasion, the app asked me to pay a parking fee of Rs 18,290!Despite repeated calls to the grievance contact number, the contractor didn't seem to be interested in getting these fixed. The profit motive would have suggested that the company would aggressively keep all sensors active, but that's not how it played out.As public choice theory would predict, corruption didn't go away. The situation was much better than in the past. Nevertheless, since the sensors weren't working, the Parking Marshalls sensed an opportunity. The system allowed them to reset or extend the parking time limits at the kiosks. Some of them started striking side deals with regular commuters. The parking marshalls also enjoyed discretion in enforcing steep fines for overparking. Since there was no robust check to track fines, they could strike a deal with the customer instead of registering an official fine. Zooming OutThe marginal benefits of the parking policy reform are greater than the marginal costs; hence, it should continue. But it is still a work in progress. Contracting out doesn't obviate the need for enforcement entirely. My anecdata reiterates one important lesson in public policy: better contracting or procurement also requires state capacity. Without having built that muscle, contractors can easily take governments for a ride. As Chitgupi, Gorsi, and Thomas write in their LeapJournal article titled Learning by doing and public procurement in India:Procurement is an expertise. No government organisation can sporadically do this well. It is an expertise which can be built, albeit over many years. In any government organisation, people and processes can be organised to focus on this expertise, and to devote time and effort on the entire pipeline of government contracting. The process of developing this capability can be accelerated by bringing in people with this specialised expertise. Strengthening the entire life cycle is required to successfully spend budget amounts. But this is only the beginning of success in procurement where government can contract to deliver quality projects efficiently, on time and at low cost.Applications for the re-awesomed Post-Graduate Programme in Public Policy are now open. Check details here.Global Policy Watch: End GameInsights on global policy issues — RSJSome recent inflation prints from the US and other developed markets suggest the central banks are winning the fight. In India, too, the inflation expectations are getting less hawkish. Is this true, or is there more to this? A bit of a diversion here. A few editions ago, I pointed out how the ECLGS scheme launched during the pandemic to support the MSME sector had worked out well in India. The sovereign promised the banks they would guarantee the loans they disburse as part of this scheme. The banks could continue to use their underwriting norms without making them too stringent because of overthinking the negative impact of the pandemic on these businesses. The bank could, therefore, support these businesses, and as it has turned out, that's all that was needed to keep this sector above water. The government didn't have to dole out loans themselves, and the banks did what they do well, namely, underwrite, disburse and collect. Net result: the system NPAs for this scheme will end up in the 3-4 per cent range in line with this kind of portfolio in normal times. I bring this up because while writing about this last month, I thought it would be useful to check if other governments went down this path during COVID-19. It turns out yes, they did. Most of western Europe did the same. Over 60 per cent of new loans in France were guaranteed by the sovereign. In Germany, it was over 40 per cent, and now they have come up with a fresh scheme to stave off the energy crisis emerging from the Ukraine conflict. In Italy, not only were fresh loans state-backed, but they also rolled over older credit to these new schemes. This seems to be becoming a thing.Governments seem to have hit upon this nice little trick where they don't have to raise debt or taxes to manage a crisis. They simply need to offer credit guarantee through banks. It will sit on their books as a contingent liability and won't show up in debt ratios. Nobody gets hurt. Neat.So, why did I bring this up while talking about inflation? Since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2009, the debt-to-GDP ratios in the developed economies have only moved one way. Up. Then we had the pandemic in 2020. Governments threw more money at the problem. The result is we have debt-to-GDP ratios upwards of 250 per cent in most OECD countries now. Two problems have arisen because of this. One, this indiscriminate money supply plus some supply chain constraints have meant inflation has hit multi-decade highs. Notwithstanding all modern monetary theory hypotheses that were in vogue a couple of years back, it turns out that more M4 money in the system will lead to higher inflation. And inflation hurts the poor most. Second, the system is vulnerable to collapsing at such debt-to-GDP ratios with the smallest of shocks going forward. I mean, how long can you keep kicking the can down the road?So, the inevitable has happened over the past six months. Central banks have raised interest rates in a dramatic manner to tame inflation. This seems to be working, as the slowing of headline inflation number suggests. But I am not sure about it. Most of the recent reduction comes from the fall in prices of the more volatile commodities. In fact, the ‘sticky' part of the consumption basket seems to be still in inflationary mode. Also, the rising rates have killed growth in most developed economies. They are in a recession. And while the employment data suggests that jobs are being added, if you look closely, the worm is beginning to turn. The slowdown across sectors will mean layoffs, consolidation and a reduction in capital expenditure. The employment rate will soon start falling. With that backdrop, what are the choices available to a government? I see a likely scenario that brings these various tugs and pulls together for a short-term fix that might appeal to them. I will elaborate below.Now that inflation has touched multi-decade highs, and we are at that point in the rate hike cycle where we have pretty much killed growth in the short term, there isn't more elbow room to increase rates. Inflation may subside a bit as supply constraints reduce, and maybe the war in Ukraine ends. But this is an opportune time for governments to reset inflation expectations upwards among its people. If you were running an inflation targeting model with a two per cent threshold (like in the US), it is somewhat easier now to raise it to 4-6 per cent without much furore. If you were running it at a 4-6 per cent range (like in India), you could reset it to 6-8 per cent. The Overton window is available for this. I think the governments will willingly take it. A slightly higher inflation expectation, without it becoming runaway, will allow central banks to pause raising the rate. It will also increase nominal GDP. This is important because a two per cent upward reset of the inflation target will lead to a corresponding increase in the nominal GDP. And increasing nominal GDP through higher inflation is the easiest way to reduce debt to GDP in the system for a government. Cutting costs and tightening the belt are all difficult ways of balancing the budget. Nobody wants to do that. In the past, letting inflation run high was unacceptable to any incumbent government. But the way the cards have fallen in the last six months, the governments can get away by citing forces beyond their control. I think no government will look this gift horse in the mouth. They will reset inflation targets. Now doing this means what's called financial repression. That is, the savers will lose because their savings will be undercut by inflation in future. So, this will have to be done gradually. But I see this level of financial repression as inevitable. The success of credit guarantee schemes opens another front for governments. As I mentioned, the governments will do more of this because why not? So, in some sense, you will see a capture of private credit by government-directed guarantee schemes. It won't be as much in India, but I see it quite likely in the developed economies. So, it is likely that while the economy will head to a recession, private banks will continue to supply credit because of these sovereign guarantees. There's a likelihood that bond traders will take a dim view of this and push up yields significantly. But there are multiple tools with the government to force pension and insurance companies to buy government bonds. This will rise. Yield curve management isn't a big deal anyway if central banks decide to do it. So, no fear on that front too. This will mean we could have continued credit expansion backed by the government in the near future without the fear of a rating downgrade. If you combine that with the developed economies bringing manufacturing back from China into their own countries, we could have a capex-led boom beginning soon after we have brought inflation into the new target limit. Of course, I'm not saying I support this kind of state intervention that pushes credit in the areas it wants to focus on instead of the market allocating capital in the most efficient way. In the long run, the state will make the wrong choices driven by its political objectives. But we will have to wait for the cycle of boom to first play out before that kind of bust unfolds. This might take a decade or maybe more. I am, therefore, sceptical of those who suggest a deep recession or stagflation is around the corner for the global economy. There will be a short recession, but other options are available for the state to manage this and push a real reckoning into the future. Stagflation might be the end game, but that end is not nigh.    HomeWork* [Paper] Internal Drivers of China's External Behaviour by Amb Shivshankar Menon is really helpful in understanding China's recent actions. This line in the paper struck me (There's a useful 2x2 matrix in it):“Today, China faces an unprecedented situation at home and abroad and is therefore reacting in new ways. China is more powerful than ever before but is also more dependent on the world. This is an unprecedented combination, not known in Chinese history—not in the Han when she had to ‘buy' off the Xiongnu by marrying Han princesses off to steppe leaders; nor in the Song when she was one and sometimes the weakest power in a world of equals; nor in the high Qing when she was powerful but independent of the external world, as the Qian Long emperor reminded George III in writing.”* [Book] The High Costs of Free Parking by Donald Shoup is essential reading on parking policy.* [Paper] Which social welfare policies should the Indian government prioritise? This paper does a cost-benefit analysis to answer this important question. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

Donald Shoup is here to talk about parking.

START Parallel Universe - MassBike E.D. and Cohost Galen Mook, a.k.a. Mookmaster Bikes, on the parallels in legislation between California and Massachusetts, plus the impact of "parking guru" Donald Shoup. Then- 7:27 Shoup's On: Laura Friedman's AB 2097 (now law) will "prohibit a public agency from imposing any minimum automobile parking requirement on any residential, commercial, or other development project...that is located within 12 miles of public transit." This codifies what High Cost of Free Parking author and world renowned "parking guru" Donald Shoup has been calling for: the beginning of the end of free parking. Donald Shoup talks with Bike Talk cohost and "Dutch Expert" Lindsay Sturman. 40:00 Separated at Birth - John Bauters, "America's Bike Mayor," recognizing that free parking is a car subsidy, helped end parking minimums in Emeryville, California in 2018. John talks with Seamus Garrity, the Los Angeles Field Representative of California Assemblymember Laura Friedman. Assemblymember Friedman introduced the bill which became the law which ended parking minimums near transit in California. John and Seamus bike to their meetings (John to Air Quality Management District, Seamus to Valley Industry Commerce Association). 58:25 Night Out - MassBike Valet volunteers Trey and Becky at the Florence Night Out. Editing by Kevin Burton. Closing Song, "Bike," by Mal Webb. Interstitial music, "Just Moving," by Don Ward.

To summarize an 800 page book in three points, cities should charge the right price for curb parking (the lowest price that maintains one to two open spaces), spend the revenue on the neighborhood with upgrades like planting trees, cleaning and upgrading sidewalks, providing transit passes, and remove off-street parking requirements. If we stop to think about the parking situation, we will realize we have been designing cities to accommodate cars for decades, instead of designing cities for the people living in them. As the author Donald Shoup points out however, planners are adept at pivoting to change course in a relatively short time. We have ample resources with all the surface parking lots in our communities to reclaim for housing and other much needed development. We should reconsider what's the highest and best use of the curb lane, economically speaking, and often the answer is not parking. When approaching parking from an economic position, it is easy to make the argument that free parking is a drain on cities not just financially, but environmentally as well. 

This episode features edited highlights from an excellent panel discussion on parking reform that took place at the YIMBYtown 2022 conference in Portland, Oregon. YIMBY stands for 'yes in my backyard', referring to supporting housing development within existing urban areas, and YIMBYtown was all about abundant housing advocacy. The panel, Parking Reform: from theory to practice, was moderated by Catie Gould of the Sightline Institute. She was in our March 2022 episode. The panelists were: Martha Roskowksi, transportation and mobility consultant in Boulder, Colorado and author of 'Ideas to Accelerate Parking Reform in the United States' John Bauters, Mayor of Emeryville, California and also chair of the Alameda County Transportation Commission and the vice chair of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Tony Jordan, our Parking Reform Network President Leah Bojo, land use consultant, formerly worked on land-use, transportation and parking at Austin City Council, and author of a chapter on Austin's first Parking Benefits District in Donald Shoup's 2018 book, Parking and the City. Read more details here.  Follow Paul Barter on Twitter. Reinventing Parking is now the official podcast of the Parking Reform Network! Why not join?

We're Han Solo this week on Mondays at the Overhead Wire!  We talk about Jennifer Homendy and the 94% rule, the need to stop fetishizing old buildings, Donald Shoup's sidewalk fix, and how some non-profits and foundations are taking a greater governmental role as governments atrophy.  We also talk about moving the capital of Indonesia away from Jakarta, the future of underground cities, concrete block alternatives, and Fort Worth's river redevelopment plan.    Follow us on twitter @theoverheadwire

Donald Shoup (www.shoupdogg.com) is a distinguished research professor at UCLA in the department of urban planning. His work revolutionized the way a lot of people viewed the impact of parking, development rules and land economics in cities, and he continues to produce provocative work about the ways parking can degrade our urban environment. It's not too much of a stretch to say he's made parking, a seemingly totally mundane topic, into something fascinating — and consequential for the health and future of our cities.

This is the fifteenth episode in Researching Transit's Handbook of Public Transport Research Series. Links to the book can be found at the end of the notes. In this episode Professor Graham Currie talks to Professor Jeff Brown and Dr Joel Mendez about funding public transport. Professor Brown is from the College of Social Sciences & Public Policy at Florida State University. He is Department Chair, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and the Interim Associate Dean for Research at the Department of Urban & Regional Planning. Dr Mendez is Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas' Urban Planning Program. The episode starts with a brief discussion of Professor Brown's background in transportation finance and policy, planning history, and public transport. He talks about how he got into research and early work with Donald Shoup on using unlimited transit passes to help reduce parking demand at universities. Professor Brown also discusses his research on streetcars and the influences on US cities to invest in this mode. Professor Currie then talks to Dr Joel Mendez about his background and research about equity and public transport, including recent work about a zero fare policy in Kansas. This is followed by a discussion about the eleventh chapter of the Handbook of Public Transport Research: Paying for public transport, which was authored by Dr Mendez, Professor James Wood, Assistant Professor Dristi Neog and Professor Brown. The chapter includes material about the benefits and cost of public transport, transit subsidies, and the challenges of providing sufficient resources to support operations and capital improvements. Dr Mendez, Professor Brown and Professor Currie discuss how paying for public transport is linked to its purpose, and how there are often many benefits of providing transit that accrue to non-users. This is part of the reason that many US services are supported by local sales taxes or other revenue streams, instead of just passenger fares. They discuss systems, such as the U-Pass, where a university makes a bulk payment to an operator in return for all students receiving free or subsidised travel. Payroll taxes, intergovernmental grants and transit funding through the US highway trust fund are also covered in the episode. Professor Brown emphasises the importance of having diverse funding sources. This might involve non-traditional forms of financing, which Dr Mendez discusses towards the end of the episode. They could also include joint development, revenue and cost sharing agreements, and other ways of capturing the property value benefits that occur when transit services are provided. Find out more about: This research in Chapter 11 of the Handbook of Public Transport Research, available for purchase from the publisher's website: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-of-public-transport-research-9781788978651.html. Professor Jeff Brown and his work at https://coss.fsu.edu/durp/faculty/jeff-brown/; and Dr Mendez and his work at https://kupa.ku.edu/joel-mendez Have feedback? Find us on twitter and Instagram @transitpodcast or using #researchingtransit Music from this episode is from https://www.purple-planet.com

Author and economist Donald Shoup of UCLA talks about destructive parking policies with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Shoup argues that most parking policies inflict unseen damage on the economy. He urges cities to charge for curbside parking and use the proceeds to improve the neighborhood beyond the curb. Stroup also explains the surprising harm done by requiring new buildings to provide a minimum level of off-street parking.

Parking requirements block affordable housing: La Times (5 min read) and Laura Friedman and Donald Shoup (8 min read) "Why all the buildings look the same" follow up. (10 min read) Modern architecture in Vietnam (4 min read) A story about a local bookstore opening during the pandemic (7 min read) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/patterns-of-development/message

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE Eve Picker: [00:00:12] Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing. My guest today is Daniel Parolek. Daniel's an architect and rising star urbanist. His firm, Opticos Design, has been working in urban placemaking and master planning for two decades now. But Daniel is best known for framing the idea of "missing middle housing." Just delivering more housing is not enough, says Daniel. We need to think about how this housing reinforces a high quality built environment, and how to provide a range of housing for all segments of the market, including moderate- and low-income households. Daniel's new book, "Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today's Housing Crisis," is a how-to book exploring these issues. Please listen in to our fascinating conversation, and if that's not enough, be sure to go to EvePicker.com to find out more about Daniel on the show notes page for this episode. You can sign up for my newsletter to access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small Change.   Eve: [00:01:44] Hello, Daniel. I'm really excited to have you on my show.   Daniel Parolek: [00:01:48] Thank you, Eve. I'm really excited to be here.   Daniel: [00:01:50] Good. I wanted to dive right in and talk about what's wrong with housing and housing choice in the U.S. today. And you coined a phrase that's really widely used now, and that is "missing middle housing." And I'd love to know what  that is. What is missing middle housing?   Daniel: [00:02:10] Yeah, it's a great starting point. So, it's a topic I'm obviously very passionate about. And the reason that I decided to emphasize, and and I coined this term back in 2011, is I wanted to help emphasize and frame a conversation about the broad range of housing choices that the market is wanting and needing, that the development industry is not delivering, in any market across the United States. And historically, right, we've done a really great job of defining policy, creating zoning, and creating development industries that can deliver single-family homes in large quantities. So, we've done a really great job with that over a series of five or six decades. I'd say over the course of the last couple of decades, starting in the early 2000s, really, in the United States, cities started figuring out how to plan for, and zone for, in the development industries and financial industries. Figured out how to deliver, the larger, you know, five, six, seven-plus story condos, a mixed-use or apartment buildings. What the missing middle is, is it's all of these housing types in between those single-family homes, such as a duplex, a fourplex, a cottage court, a small courtyard apartment, that existed in neighborhoods prior to the 1940s and delivered a broad range of price points and types of housing. And, really since the 1940s, put barrier after barrier in place for the delivery of these. So, starting in the 1970s, based on some research we, I did for my book, an American Housing Survey, there has been a steady decline in the percentage of overall housing that is missing middle since the late 1970s. And I think, in 2013, the missing middle housing, which I define, and it sort of ties into the categories of an American Housing Survey, as 19 units or less per building. But typically it's really kind of that eight-unit or less. Less than three percent of housing delivered in 2013 was missing middle housing. And so, what we're seeing is that there's a shift in demand in the markets and people want walkability. They want mobility choices. They want more compact living. They want access to goods and services around the corner from their households. But that sort of lifestyle in home is being delivered less and less.   Eve: [00:04:44] So, the question I have really is why is that? I mean, we, you know, I suspect some of it is financing, but ...   Daniel: [00:04:53] Yeah.   Eve: [00:04:54] ... why has it, you know, why has it declined so much?   Daniel: [00:04:57] One of the things I really enjoyed about writing my book is I got to actually sit down and do some research and write a chapter on the many barriers that are in place for the delivery of missing middle. And, you know, we could talk for a couple of hours just about those barriers. But I think the real starting point for a good conversation about why they're not being delivered really starts with antiquated zoning. We're utilizing a zoning system that was created over, as an operating system, that was created over 100 years ago.   Eve: [00:05:29] You know, the more I do these podcasts, the more zoning seems to be the root of all evil.   Daniel: [00:05:37] Yeah. I sort of often ask the question when I'm talking to an audience of like how many operating systems that are 100 years old are we still using? And there's very, very few of them. But zoning is one of them. So, actually, starting 20 years ago when I started my firm Opticos Design, one of our real focuses was pushing for zoning reform, because both with our developer clients as well with our clients that were cities, we were finding that everybody wanted the right kind of projects, but the zoning was in the way. Now, that's just one of many barriers, as I mentioned before, right? That's, there's everything from, right, there's construction defect liability that makes it really hard in many states, or risky, I will say, in many states for developers to build condos at the missing middle scale, just too much risk to sort of warrant taking that type of condo project on, right? It's really hard for developers to finance condos, and for households to purchase condos. It's just not an easy system that's set up ...   Eve: [00:06:45] Right.   Daniel: [00:06:45] ... in the same way as you can buy a single-family detached house.   Eve: [00:06:49]  Yeh, I built a built an eight unit condo building years ago. And it was pretty miserable.   Daniel: [00:06:55] Yeah. And obviously there is, you know, community pushback from, you know, this whole NIMBY conversation that's happening, that there's just a lot of communities that are kind of afraid of anything that's not in single-family detached. I think a big part of why the missing middle concept has spread so broadly is that it's giving communities a way to talk about the need for a broader range of housing choices without using these intimidating and scary terms like density or multifamily or upzoning, but rather talking about a cottage court. Like how can a college court be that intimidating to somebody, and personalizing those stories. Because most people, when we're talking about this in communities to try to build support, have either lived in one of these types, they have kids that have lived, or are living in these types, or a relative or a good friend. Or maybe there's a duplex right around the corner on their block that some of their friends live in. So, that, we find that sort of shifting that conversation away from some of this terminology like density that brings really negative perceptions to people's minds is a really important way to kind of remove that community pushback barrier.   Eve: [00:08:11] Right. So, you talked about a decline since the 1970s, but I mean, these zoning systems were already in place. So, what prompted that moment in time for people to stop building that way? Because zoning had already been pushing against it for a while, right?   Daniel: [00:08:31] Yes. Zoning in the United States really started in the late 20s, sort of through the 30s and early 40s in terms of its initial application. And what I would say is I don't actually know and I don't know of anybody that's done the research to understand why there was such a specific threshold or turning point in the 70s to shift this. I mean, it must have had to do with federal funding or federal programs. But I don't, I don't actually know the answer to that. But it would be really, it's a good sort of research project for a graduate student to take on for sure.   Eve: [00:09:06] It does align with, you know, suburban flight, which was happening around then. Certainly, the city I'm in, and many others, 70s and the 80s were kind of that moment in time where people left inner cities and went to the suburbs where there are many more single-family homes. And so, maybe the demand just increased then.   Daniel: [00:09:29] Yeh.   Eve: [00:09:29] They left the inner cities, which probably had more of the housing types that you're talking about, the missing middle, right?   Daniel: [00:09:35] Yeah, absolutely. Many American cities by the, sort of, 1970s were in a pretty large state of decline or had seen several decades of decline and disinvestment. So, I'm sure that was part of that. And so, it was just a much more rational or easier choice for households to buy that single-family detached house in the suburbs. One of the things I like to talk about is that I feel that it's really time, just based on the affordable housing crisis that we're having across the country, this shift in demand and what households are looking for. Chris Nelson did a, some great research for my book and he wrote a chapter – he's a, he teaches at the University of Arizona – that found that 60 percent of all housing built between now and 2040 would need to be missing middle in walkable urban context to meet the demand.   Eve: [00:10:34] That was my next question for you, actually ...   Daniel: [00:10:36] Yeh.   Eve: [00:10:36] ... that was actually, you know, how much can that address the deficit? That's interesting.   Daniel: [00:10:41] Yeah. And we, you know, I think we can all acknowledge that the industry isn't just going to all of a sudden shift and sort of shift in delivering 60 percent of housing and missing middle and in walkable urban context. But that's what it would take. So, it's a pretty, pretty dramatic number. And I think it's just a really strong call to action for planners, for city decision makers, for federal housing policymakers, development industry, to just think very carefully and play their role in sort of this shift, this dramatic shift, that needs to happen. And really delivering what households across America want as home in the 21st century, which is very different than what households wanted in the 50s, 60s or 70s. And we're still kind of hanging on to that single-family detached home mantra, which is not what households are looking for these days.   Eve: [00:11:41] So, I'm wondering, like, what's the big fix? How does this shift really happen? I mean, you have a number of things that need to be addressed. How do you take that on so that you can start building these types of products again?   Daniel: [00:11:55] Yeah, I think that it's a little bit intimidating. There is a tremendous amount of change that needs to happen, right? It's not just a change in the development industry. It's change in city policy, city zoning, development industry, financial industries, federal housing policy. But what I would say is that there has been some tremendous progress in the last year and a half, that because cities have failed to make the changes in their policy and zoning that are necessary, so, like the state of Oregon last year passed statewide legislation, it's called HB2001, that allows up to three or four units on any lot, statewide, even those that are zoned for single-family. So, that was really a major milestone in sort of removing those barriers.   Eve: [00:12:45] Yeh, and I have been offering on my website that actually went live today that takes advantage of that zoning law.   Daniel: [00:12:53] Yeah, I think that's a tremendous opportunity. The city of Minneapolis did something similar city-wide, allow up to three units ...   Eve: [00:12:59] Yeah.   Daniel: [00:13:00] ... per lot. And state of Nebraska, even, my home state, recently passed the Missing Middle Housing Act, which will allow multiple units on all lots, across the country. So, that's happening, I would say that from the development industry standpoint, I see the most change from outside of kind of the typical players. I think it's new players coming into the real estate industry, a lot of it tech-influenced. I guess this whole prop tech influence, I think is likely what's going to have the most impact, because I see an inability or reluctance to change in a lot of the major development players, the reluctance or inability to change at a pace that is actually necessary. And, you know, there's a lot of innovation happening on alternative construction delivery systems, whether it's prefab or modular or, you know, like how do you deliver housing quicker, more cost effectively? And I think there's a lot of change happening. It's just a lot of it hasn't been proven yet, and is kind of having a hard time to scale up. So, I think all of those are interesting shifts that are happening.   Eve: [00:14:09] Yes. So, I want to go back to the statewide legislation.   Daniel: [00:14:13] Um hmm.   Eve: [00:14:13] So, when the state legislates you can now put up to four units on a lot ...   Daniel: [00:14:18] Um hmm.   Eve: [00:14:18] ... but zoning doesn't change. What does that look like? When you have typical single-family house setbacks and statewide legislation that now says you can squeeze more into the site? How does everyone manage that?   Daniel: [00:14:35] Yeh. So, as part of that legislation, as it requires the local jurisdictions to change their zoning by a specific time, in a specific time period. And so, like the state of Oregon right now is going through a large process where they're providing grants to local jurisdictions to change that zoning and they're creating a model code.   Eve: [00:14:54] That's expensive.   Daniel: [00:14:56] Yeah, and it's not simple.   Eve: [00:14:58] No.   Daniel: [00:14:58] It's not simple. And what I see is, and I noticed that there was, I think it was a podcast or blog post on your site about the barriers of parking requirements ...   [00:15:10] Yes.   [00:15:10] ... you can have on housing and the cost of housing. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see, because I don't think it was specifically part of the legislation that local jurisdictions had to remove or reduce parking requirements, and based on our work, both with cities and with developers, we found that it's absolutely necessary for cities to, ideally, remove and at least dramatically reduce their parking requirements to really make missing middle feasible.   Eve: [00:15:39] You know, I interviewed Donald Shoup.   Daniel: [00:15:41] Oh, yeah.   Eve: [00:15:42] Who basically says, you know, those thousands of pages of parking requirements and zoning laws should be replaced with one line. Parking not required.   Daniel: [00:15:52] Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I know you you focus and talk a lot about sort of mobility choices. And I like that your change index, that you use to score projects, really focuses on sort of these walkable, urban mobility-rich contexts, which is fantastic. And I feel like the demand for that walkable urban living, and I think that's a term Chris Leinberger coined, and I know he, you interviewed him ...   Eve: [00:16:20] Yes.   Daniel: [00:16:20] ... is, it's like a third of baby boomers, which is the largest market segment, and two thirds of millennial households, want this walkable urban living and, right, it's a really simple supply and demand equation that you have a really high demand and a low supply that's not really growing. Like it's a really, I'm not an economist, but it's a pretty easy, basic economic equation that sort of is going to, the response, or the result is going to be really unaffordable, high-cost housing in those areas that are delivering that walkable urban living. And we're working on a project right now called Culdesac Tempe, which will be the largest car-free community in the country when it's built next year. And it's in Tempe, Arizona. And the developers, our clients, their name is Culdesac, it's obviously an ironic name.   Eve: [00:17:14] Yes, it is.   Daniel: [00:17:14] They believe very strongly that there is a demand for this car-free living and they have more deposits from interested renters than they have units in the first phase. And they have, I think ...   Eve: [00:17:30] Wow.   Daniel: [00:17:30] ... something like 3,000 interested renters signed up to lease future phases. And so, it's proving that there's a really strong demand for choice. I think it's really about ...   Eve: [00:17:43] Yes.   Daniel: [00:17:43] ... providing a choice. And even in the Phoenix Metro, the one of the most auto-centric places in the country, that you can deliver this car-free living and people are super-interested in it, and it's ...   Eve: [00:17:55] Well, probably because the product they can afford to build is probably higher quality because they don't have to add in parking spaces, and the cost of those. And the person renting those apartments also doesn't have to pay for the cost of those. It seems like it's a win-win, if you can locate living units close to transit ...   Daniel: [00:18:16] Yeh.   Eve: [00:18:16] ... it's just better for everyone.   Daniel: [00:18:18] Yeah, it's along the light rail line.   Eve: [00:18:21] Oh, that's fabulous.   Daniel: [00:18:22] They're, you know, being very thoughtful about bikeshare stations, electric scooter stations, you know, pick up and drop off from the, you know, Lyft and Ubers of the world. And they're, you know, even getting funding from tech companies that are testing some of the technology within the project, things like delivery, you know, robot delivery, and, you know, delivery of groceries and things like that. So, it's kind of a testing ground of sorts. And yeah, it's, absolutely they're not having, so, you know, if they're having to build even one parking space per unit, right, you know, it would end up needing ...   Eve: [00:19:03] A lot of land.   Daniel: [00:19:03] ... a parking garage, a big expensive, at 30 or 40 grand per space, and a lot of land. And as the master planner of that project, you know, it just opened up so many opportunities to create the most high quality public spaces. 60 percent of the project is public space because, because cars are having to slice through the project or being parked on the project, and the housing types we were able to create our courtyard based. They're very responsive, both the plan and the housing types are responsive to the desert climate. And so, it's a really compact urban design ...   Eve: [00:19:42] Interesting.   Daniel: [00:19:42] ...and really narrow asseyos and courtyard housing that's focused on, you know, comfort in the hot season, but also fostering a really strong sense of community as well ...   Eve: [00:19:53] Wow.   Daniel: [00:19:53] ... which is a big goal of the project.   Eve: [00:19:55] So, is this typical of the work you do it at Opticas?   Daniel: [00:19:58] Yeah. So, yeah, it's, we're, about half of our work is with cities. And so, with those cities we're doing, usually doing urban revitalization, transit oriented projects, you know, downtown plan, corridor revitalization plan, new transit, sort of thinking about the impact of future transit and how a place might evolve. And that entails everything from, you know, the community participation process, the sort of visioning, sort of what's the defining the future form of the physical environment, as well as rewriting the zoning. And then the other half of our projects are with developers. And the types of developers we work with are, tend to be the more innovative, forward thinking developers who really want to do something that's not being delivered in a market.   Eve: [00:20:46] Um Hmm.   Daniel: [00:20:47] And so, the Culdesac Tempe project is a super exciting one. We're, we've also delivered the country's first missing middle neighborhood. It's in the Omaha, Nebraska, Metro in a small town called Papillion, Nebraska. And it's a 40-acre neighborhood created with buildings that are no more than eight units per building. And there's now 132 units built and the market is responding super well. It's performing financially very well for our client. And he is super excited. He can't build fast enough to keep up with the demand for it.   Eve: [00:21:22] Wow.   Daniel: [00:21:23] So, it's exciting to see that. And it's transforming a somewhat suburban context into a more walkable context. And part of that is we introduced a small neighborhood main street that has flex spaces on the ground floor of the live/work units that have incubated a small pizza shop, small yoga studio, sounds like a coffee shop may be coming shortly, sort of got stalled due to Covid. But it's just, we just get excited about those sorts of projects that can sort of move the bar. And that projects redefining what Class A multifamily can look and feel like. The Culdesac project is proving that car-free living, there's demand for it and, you know, like our, we did a project in the Salt Lake City region for one of the largest builders in Salt Lake City that basically enabled them to deliver a high quality for sale housing choice to entry-level buyers that they couldn't figure out how to deliver, and weren't able to deliver, even with a fairly conventional tuck under townhouse product type. So, yeah, we're having a lot of fun.   Eve: [00:22:37] It sounds like, it sounds like a lot of fun.   Daniel: [00:22:40] Yeah.   Eve: [00:22:41] So, what led you to this work?   Daniel: [00:22:44] Yeah, it's really interesting and sort of looking back at it and I sort of wrote the foreword to my book that sort of talks about the evolution of missing middle and my interest in walkable urbanism, sort of over the course of my life. And it's interesting because I do feel it really starts with growing up in a small town in the Midwest that was actually very walkable and very bikable and sort of kind of quintessential small town urbanism that functioned in a lot of ways, like neighborhoods function in larger cities ...   [00:23:18] Um hmm.   [00:23:18] ... a vibrant main street, you know, could bike across the town at the age of six or seven. And so, that planted the seeds. My grandmother,sorry, my great-grandmother, actually lived in a duplex, a block and a half from the small main street of my town. So, right, that was an introduction to sort of different housing types and housing choices. And I, you know, I have an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame, and I was fortunate enough that it was one of the few programs in the country that, as part of the focus of the program, teaches urbanism and trains you in good urbanism just as much as architecture. And I've lived in a number of places across the country like Chicago, Park Slope in Brooklyn, that these neighborhoods that had a really great mix of these missing middle housing types ...   Eve: [00:24:07] Um hmm.   Daniel: [00:24:07] ... and ended up coming out to UC Berkeley to get a master's degree in urban design and just had a really amazing faculty here that, a group of mentors that enabled me to explore this, this concept of these housing types. And as soon as I graduated from that program, I opened Opticos, which, you know, in 2000, we wrote our first zoning code that had the, we didn't call them missing middle at the time, but it had cottage courts and courtyard apartments ...   Eve: [00:24:38] Um hmm.   Daniel: [00:24:38] ... that were embedded in that zoning code. And, at that time, the planners, you know, thought we were really crazy. They didn't know what we were, they were like how can, you can't do this. This isn't the way we do this. And at this point, I would say that the approach which is, in what we call "form based coding," is fairly common practice. A lot of cities are doing it. Cities are asking for it. Cities are realizing it's a more progressive and thoughtful way ...   Eve: [00:25:08] Yeh, yeh.   Daniel: [00:25:08] ... to approach zoning. So, I think over the course of my life, it's just that my understanding has evolved and it's been part of my daily life and part of the, our, my architecture and urban design practice, and even the neighborhood I live in now in Berkeley, California, about 20 percent of the lots have missing middle types. And what that does, it allows my son's first grade teacher to live in a triplex. Her mother lives in one of the other units and she's also a teacher at that neighborhood school. And the third unit is occupied by my daughter's middle school physical education teacher. So, right, it's, it's functioning and it's delivering that attainable housing choice in my neighborhood.   Eve: [00:25:53] Right.   Daniel: [00:25:54] And this is, it is just good to personalize stories in that way.   Eve: [00:25:57] Yeh, it is. So you've been doing this for a while and there's always things that work really well, better than you expect, and things that don't work so well. You have any stories about those?   Daniel: [00:26:07] You know, we found that it's actually a little bit hard for a lot of cities and their planners and sometimes their decision makers to make this mental shift to a conversation about form and scale and desired building types and away from density and FAR and these other metrics that zoning has been so reliant on. And it's, the transition hasn't been as smooth as I would have imagined when I wrote my book "Form Based Codes," I think it was in 2009 it was released. I would have hoped by now that this would have become, there'd be, you know, hundreds of really highly-qualified practitioners and planners out there writing really high quality form based codes. But it really hasn't. It's happened very slowly and so, way more slowly than it needs to be happening. And I think the same is it's, the level of change that's necessary within the development industry, it's hard, you know, we'll get clients that that call us and say, you know, we really like this idea of missing middle, but when push comes to shove, we're saying, well, you really need to be OK with only providing one off-street parking space per unit and letting the on street parking deliver that second space and they're just, sort of, it's just, takes them outside of their comfort zone to the point where it's not going to really deliver the choice and the quality of living that we feel is necessary or the type of living that the market is demanding.   Eve: [00:27:29] I mean, I really have to wonder how much of that is driven by, you know, pretty traditional financial institutions, and I'll probably sound a little bit like a broken record on this. But I know that, you know, when you go to a bank that hasn't seen a product like the one you're trying to build before, it's, it can be sometimes almost impossible to get it financed. And without financing, you don't have a project. So...   Daniel: [00:27:52] Yeah.   Eve: [00:27:53] ... is that kind of the last frontier? Banks? I don't know.   Daniel: [00:27:57] No, I think it is, because, right, you're right. If there's not a comparable project in the market, right, it's it's hard for a bank to go outside of their comfort zone to say we're going to finance that project.   Eve: [00:28:11] Yeah, they need appraisals ...   Daniel: [00:28:12] Yeah.   Eve: [00:28:12] ... and the appraisals need three like-kind properties. And then they need to see that you, you know, you have all the approvals and entitlements that you need. It's pretty complicated pieces.   Daniel: [00:28:25] Yeah. And I do feel that, you know, what you're doing with the crowdfunding at Small Change can really benefit the application of missing middle housing, because, you know, what those innovative small builders/developers that are looking for that capital, I feel like, you've provided that platform.   Eve: [00:28:46] Yeh, so we did, you know, one in L.A. that might interest you, that is a bungalow court project. Eight units in courtyard style. It hadn't been built, I think, since the 1950s and very much in line with this missing middle, except that they, they built it as homeless housing, which is also good.   Daniel: [00:29:05] Yeah, it's, I noticed  that Bungalow Gardens project, and that's really at the heart of missing middle housing types. It's a really fantastic type that we delivered historically in neighborhoods that we, it's almost impossible and illegal to build in most cities, that ... it seems so basic. And, but there are so many barriers in place. And, you know, we launched missingmiddlehousing.com in 2016 because there was such a growing demand and interest on this topic. And, I can't remember what the numbers, but there's a large volume of visitors to that site, sort of on a weekly and a monthly basis. And it just shows that there's really strong interest in ...   Eve: [00:29:52] Yeah, yeah.   Daniel: [00:29:53] ... in this idea of exploring, you know, what are some of the tools that cities and planners and developers can put in their toolbox to address this gap between the type of housing this market wants, and I feel like one of those tools, definitely, especially for the delivery of missing middle, is and, I think this crowdfunding you're doing is great, so ...   Eve: [00:30:14] I hope.   Daniel: [00:30:18] Yeh, it's, and I think it's just, it's the type of innovation that, sort of rethinking the way we're doing things that, you know, needs to be happening.   Eve: [00:30:27] Yeah.   Daniel: [00:30:28] Yeah.   Eve: [00:30:28] Just out of interest. Are there any other current trends in real estate development that you think are really important for either the future of housing choice or better cities, things that you've been watching?   Daniel: [00:30:42] There's a couple of things. I think that we really need to figure out how to deliver walkable urbanism in new communities. And there, in addition to zoning, there's a lot of other barriers, starting with street designs, infrastructure, or sort of utility requirements. So, there's a long list of barriers. But I think that, you know, we've been talking about it for a while here in terms of more sustainable development patterns, but we haven't made a lot of progress. I would say we're still battling the same battles, project by project, that we were 20 years ago in terms of trying to remove some of these barriers – the zoning, the thoroughfare designs, push back from communities. So, we need to figure out a way to continue to make progress as more and more households either choose to rent or need to rent. I think we do need to figure out how to deliver a broader range of choices in rental housing. And like our Prairie Queen neighborhood in the Omaha Metro, I think it's showing there is a strong demand for a more sophisticated renter that's looking for a neighborhood, high quality living in a neighborhood, not just a multifamily project that's clustering housing together. And I think that's partly why the single family home rental market has taken off so broadly. And I think the primary reason is that renters aren't being given a choice other than the conventional multifamily ...   Eve: [00:32:06] Yeh.   Daniel: [00:32:06] ... or sort of the urban product type. And I think that missing middle can slip in there and provide a type of living that they're looking for. On the for sale side, I think we just need to figure out a way to deliver smaller scale condominium choices at this missing middle scale, and that fourplex, you know, eightplex, even cottage court scale, both in terms of financing, in terms of zoning, in terms of households getting mortgages. So, I think those are the things that I often, ...   Eve: [00:32:36] Yeh.   Daniel: [00:32:36] ... you know, reinforce as real needs out there to really respond to this, the growing need.   Eve: [00:32:42] Yes, yeah. Well, I hope I get to visit the car-free Culdesac project sometime soon. That would be a highlight for me.   Daniel: [00:32:50] Yeah.   Eve: [00:32:51] Sounds fabulous. And I can't wait to hear what's next for you. So, thank you very, very much for joining me.   Daniel: [00:32:58] Thank you. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to future conversations.   Eve: [00:33:23] That was Daniel Parolek. He's taught us all about the missing middle, broadly defined as housing in between single-family detached and large apartment complexes. We're talking about multiunit housing types such as duplexes and fourplexes, bungalow courts and mansion apartments, all of which were typically mixed in with single-family homes in pre-war city neighborhoods. Post-War developments, by contrast, focused on single-family zoning, driven by the growth of the suburbs and many cities ended up restricting the building of new multiunit structures. So, Daniel is a strong advocate for zoning reform to bring back that missing middle.   Eve: [00:34:19] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today's episode at my website, EvePicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And thank you, Daniel, for sharing your thoughts. We'll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker, signing off to go make some change.

This week we're replaying one of our most popular episodes in the last few years. Patrick Siegman of Siegman & Associates joins the podcast for spirited discussion about parking. We chat about the etymology of the word parking, the legend that is Donald Shoup, and why the topic of parking gets so personal.

Engage - Episode 2 - "Streetwise"Can cities be smart? Can streets be wise? Can the curb be intelligently, managed and priced dynamically to keep shoppers circulating and paid parking occupancy where it needs to be to drive community re-investment? Today’s push for smarter cities and battle for the curb are part of rich and contentious history that’s as old as the city itself. From the unconventional wisdom of world-renowned parking guru Dr. Donald Shoup of UCLA, author of the High Cost of Free Parking, over to Europe with Amsterdam Smart City Ambassador Frans Anton Vermast, in this episode of Engage, host Kelly Lawetz and David Chauvin drawn a line through history with a specific focus on the new battle for the curb.

Episódio #5 – Álvaro Seco: Que Políticas de Estacionamento para uma Mobilidade Urbana Sustentável? Neste episódio das conversas da Bicicultura conversámos com o Prof. Álvaro Seco do Departamento de Engenharia Civil na FCT da Universidade de Coimbra sobre a relação entre as políticas de gestão de estacionamento em contexto urbano e a promoção de um sistema de mobilidade sustentável. O estacionamento é um elemento fundamental do sistema de transportes pois determina o nível de atratividade do modo automóvel em relação a outros modos de transporte. O seu papel é ainda mais relevante nos meios urbanos e metropolitanos, onde o espaço público é mais escasso e mais concorrido. A política de planeamento e de gestão do estacionamento deve ser usada de forma a influenciar as escolhas de mobilidade a favor de modos mais eficientes e mais sustentáveis, e ainda como um instrumento de qualificação do espaço urbano. No entanto, a prática comum no nosso país no que se refere às políticas de gestão de estacionamento parece ser ainda caracterizada por uma abordagem de ajustamento da oferta à procura esperada, sendo definida de forma descoordenada e largamente independente do restante sistema de transportes e da estratégia de mobilidade urbana. Embora o planeamento da acessibilidade e mobilidade urbana seja cada vez mais caracterizado por estratégias e medidas que promovem a adoção de modos de transporte mais sustentáveis, o estacionamento continua a ser o elemento do sistema de mobilidade onde é mais difícil fazer alterações de forma a reduzir o tráfego automóvel. O estacionamento é o elefante na sala que os autarcas tentam ignorar. Reduzir a oferta de estacionamento automóvel e/ou aumentar o custo de acesso ao estacionamento é das medidas menos populares que um autarca pode implementar. A conversa dá uma visão histórica da evolução das políticas de estacionamento, a gestão do estacionamento na via pública e fora da via pública, os problemas da política de requisitos mínimos de estacionamento fora da via pública, e o custo privado e social do estacionamento, entre outros temas. Terminamos o podcast com a música da Joni Mitchell "Big Yellow Taxi", do álbum “Ladies of the Canyon.” (1970): Podes encontrar mais informação sobre os temas da conversa aqui: Shoup, D. (ed.), Parking and the City, New York: Routledge, 2018. Shoup, D., The High Cost of Free Parking, Chicago: Planners Press, 2005 and 2011. Donald Shoup´s website: https://www.shoupdogg.com/publications/ Seco, A.J.M. e Gonçalves, J.H.G (2009) Índices de oferta de estacionamento: aplicabilidade da 3ª geração de índices. Artigo apresentado no XX Congresso da ANPET – Associação de Pesquisa e Ensino em Transportes. Seco, A.J.M. and Bastos, A.S. (2008) Efficient Solutions for Urban Mobility - Policies, Strategies and Measures.

Today Oliver interviews Paul Steely White, head of Policy at Link by Superpedestrian. We had Assaf Bidermaan, the CEO of Superpedestrian on last year to talk about their new scooter, but that was before they launched Link and recently won one of the Seattle scooter permits. The second mover advantage in this space continues to become clearer and it was great to dig into this. Paul has been around the micromobility/bike advocacy traps a long time first at Transportation Alternatives, then Bird and now Link, and like many others we’ve had on, is a bit of an OG of the space. We hope you enjoyed this as much as we did.- His background at Transportation Alternatives, Bird and now Superpedestrian- How and why Superpedestrian decided to start LINK, and the importance of the feedback cycle in product development- What LINK does differently in it’s vehicle including the importance of being able to do granular onboard vehicle maps and how their vehicle intelligence and operations allow them to be profitable with only one ride per day.- What he thinks Bird and Lime did wrong.- The New York City RFP for scooters and what they’re seeing in the space- What he is seeing with LINK and cities now in terms of what they want for their operators- The question of infrastructure, and his experience working with Transportation Alternatives and experts like Donald Shoup to change street space allocation.- How it helps to be a second mover in the space- The emergence of debt in new rounds of scooter funding and how the question of insurance is changing as the industry matures.

In this episode, John has a fascinating conversation with Donald Shoup, a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA about how strategic parking policy reforms can help create healthy, vibrant communities.

Don Ward, a self-described Shoupista, interviews his leader, "free parking" debunker/guru Donald Shoup. Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA, and author of The High Cost of Free Parking-https://www.shoupdogg.com/ Yolanda T. Davis-Overstreet returns with the next installment in her Bike Talk series, Black Lives Roll 'En, to tap into the #BigQuestions around Black Women's Health, Bicycling & Green Spaces, with: > Lula Carter of Black Girls Do Bike : LA-https://www.facebook.com/groups/BGDBLA > Kali Malikah of Soul + Soil-https://thesoulandsoil.com/ and > Tiffany Robinson, Senior Active Modes Coordinator (Walking) at Auckland Transport - New Zealand-https://www.aucklandnz.com/study-work-and-live/work-and-live/blog/from-la-la-land-to-the-land-of-the-long-white-cloud With Global Mobility News by Teranig, blogger with Have-a-Go-https://haveago.city/

DESCRIPTIONDonald Shoup, FACIP, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, discusses parking minimums, paid parking and Pearl Harbor.SURVEYCould you give us 2 minutes of your time? We would be so grateful if you could fill out this quick 2 minute survey to help us learn more about our listeners: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TV68NB9SPONSORSThis episode is brought to you by the International Parking & Mobility Institute, the largest and leading association of parking and mobility professionals in the world. Visit parking-mobility.org/stayconnected to access free resources, including professional development and transitional memberships for industry professionals affected by COVID-19 changes.This episode brought to you by the International Parking & Mobility Institute, the world's largest association of parking and mobility professionals and publishers of the industry's only soup-to-nuts textbook about all things parking. Learn more and order your copy at parking-mobility.org/textbook.WEBSITEShttps://www.theparkingpomegranate.com/https://www.facebook.com/groups/70015940360/https://www.parkingcast.com/https://www.parking-mobility.org/

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 250: In conversation with the rock star of parking, Donald Shoup Saturday 18th July 2020 SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning at University of California at Los Angeles, and author of the groundbreaking 2005 booking The High Cost of Free Parking. SHOWNOTES: www.the-spokesmen.com

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE. Eve Picker: [00:00:12] Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing. Today marks the first anniversary of this podcast, something I am immensely proud of.   [00:00:36] A year ago, I didn’t know that our audience would grow as it has. In fact, a year ago I wasn’t sure we would have an audience at all.  And I certainly never imagined that I would have the opportunity to talk with so many extraordinary individuals, leaders and movers in their respective fields, all doing remarkable things.  When we started the podcast, I thought we would focus on real estate and the impact it makes.  But I’ve discovered that “real estate” is a very broad industry. I’ve found a horde of people working in fascinating niches around this one big central theme – the built environment we all occupy. [00:01:26] These people work in city planning, on affordable housing, in impact investing, on mobility issues, in fintech, as architects, on sustainable development, on community capital, on equity in communities and in many other niches, pushing the boundaries of the built environment to be better for everyone.  The range of work that is being accomplished, is quite frankly, astounding. [00:01:59] I learned how big, visionary thinkers make cities better. Like Josh MacManus in How to leave places better than you find them. He’s spent quite a lot of time rebuilding downtown Detroit.  Or Tom Murphy, past mayor of Pittsburgh, who showed incredible fortitude in shepherding Pittsburgh from abandoned to reinvented in How to transform a city. And most recently, Avra Jain, who tells us all to look past the working girl on the corner in Beyond the Vagabond. When she looked she saw the future of Biscayne Boulevard.   [00:02:45] Other guests have reminded me of the power of zoning, architecture and design starting with Liz Faletta in By right, by design. Her in depth research on the impact of zoning on housing in Los Angeles provides unexpected insight.   In Atlanta, Eric Kronberg convinced me yet again of the importance of salvaging architecture in The zoning whisperer.   Christine Mondor reinforces the idea that architects can influence the future of cities in The power of design.   And Lorenzo Perez’s creativity as a real estate developer in Phoenix caught me off guard in Real estate artist. His approach to transforming ugly desert architecture into beautiful community spaces is wildly creative. [00:03:44] Let’s not forget the housing crisis. Lots of my guests are all in looking for big solutions. John Perfitt and Jason Neville are tackling homeless housing in Los Angeles by re-introducing iconic architecture, in Hungry for disruption; Molly McCabe describes the unusual approach of the Lotus Campaign in Capital is just a tool. Jonathan Tate takes an architect’s approach by focusing on the value of odd lots and the houses you can build on them in Lead by example. Scott Choppin is tackling multi-generational workforce housing in The contrarian developer, an important niche that has gone unnoticed by other housing developers. [00:04:31] Matt Hoffman is focusing instead on how technology might solve the crisis in 7.4 million short. Rebecca Foster, in San Francisco, is busy saving existing affordable housing through financial tools on Accelerating affordable housing. Brian Gaudio has a modular housing solution in Scaling up. And Thibault Manekin (T-bo) of Seawall Development is focusing on specific communities, affordability and astounding preservation efforts in Choose your own rent. [00:05:22] Across the Pacific Ocean, Australian architect Jeremy McCleod has figured out how to deliver Sustainable, affordable and beautiful housing in a market that most people can’t afford. Fellow Australian, Kris Daff, is tackling the same problem in a different way. He’s Assembling communities and offering them a path to home ownership.   And across the Atlantic Ocean Marc Koehler is turning the architectural design process upside down by first curating communities and then designing a building around them in his Superlofts project.  It’s super fantastic!  [00:06:08] Community development and social equity have moved into the foreground this year, and I expect will even more so next.   Brian Murray is Embedded in community in Philadelphia, working on projects that provide equitable opportunity for everyone. Josh Lavrinc has spent his career squarely focused on Advancing community development, through capital raising and real estate development Emerick Paul Patterson is busy experimenting with inclusionary community tactics in New York. Listen to his love of diversity in Delicious Urban Soup. [00:06:47] In West Virginia, Brandon Dennison is experimenting as only an entrepreneur can, on how to end generational poverty in A bold experiment in coal country. John Folan, who heads a department of architecture, wants to make sure that the next generation of architects understand the meaning of equity. For John, Equity is the thread. Majora Carter has gone from Revitalization strategist to barista in her efforts to bring equity to the South Bronx, one of the poorest zip codes in the country, and where she lives. “Nobody should have to move out of their neighborhood to live in a better one,” says Majora. Sadie McKeown, in Political will and community, has seen firsthand the influence of good and steady political leadership in building better communities. [00:07:43] Justin Garrett Moore has a day job ensuring the quality of public space in New York City.  But on the weekends, he’s knee-deep in redeveloping the community he grew up in. Hear what he’s up against as a black man in Black, white and red(lining). Adam Sgrenci is showing communities how they can control their own destinies, andn educating developers on how to Co-create. Adrian Washington has been developing in Opportunity Zones before they were a thing. He decided a long time ago that Greenfields are boring. And Katie Swenson is the quintessential community architect. Home is the most important community development concept for her. [00:08:43] For insights into economic development and financial inclusion hear Kimber Lanning who is Striving for justice in Arizona or Brian Beckon explain how to raise community capital in Share the wealth. Jorge Newbery is using Fintech to keep people in their homes. He’s saved 10,000 and counting, while Ommeed Sathe sees Big Change in his role at Prudential, helping them to build a billion-dollar impact fund. Lance Chimka who leads an Economic Development Department believes their role should always be First in. Towards growth. Christina Marsh has given herself over to the remaking of Erie in Of service. In Erie. Melissa Koide is researching and advancing ideas on financial inclusion. With Fintech. And Lyneir Richardson, wants to help 1,000 urban entrepreneurs grow their business.   [00:09:55] I’ve learned about mobility in cities, and how it touches real estate and equity, from Karina Ricks, who heads a newly energized Department of Mobility, and from Gabe Klein, a mobility rock star, who convinced me that the future of mobility will be enhanced by data in Mobility is pretty pedestrian. Harriet Tregoning is taking on a leadership role with NUMO, the New Urban Mobility Alliance, and explains why in The reluctant planner. And let’s not forget Donald Shoup, parking czar, who believes that parking is over-rated and under-compensated in Parking not required.  [00:10:38] Others think about investment in ways I never imagined. Janine Firpo is on a personal journey to ensure that every dollar she invests does good. Listen to her explain why in She’s all in. Laura Callanan is squarely focused on Connecting impact and creativity. And Mark Roderick, a crowdfunding attorney, explains how the Securities and Exchange commissions are opening the doors for Democratizing investment. And why its a huge step forward; [00:11:12] For innovation in the building industry listen to Jennifer Castenson, who surely has her finger on the pulse of new trends, in Living the Jetson life;   Or maybe you want to learn about blockchain? Listen to Sandy Selman explain how it might be applied to real estate in Digital twins; and if you are ready to embrace sustainability and saving our planet in the most wholistic way, Sandy Wiggins may just be the one to listen to in Let’s change our mindset. And if you think we need to get back to a former time, listen to Jim Kumon of the Incremental Development Alliance talk about The lost art of small-scale development.  He’s teaching small-scale developers how to get back there all over the country. [00:12:01] Phew. That’s a lot of podcasts.  I’ve enjoyed every interview with every person.  I’m in awe of them all.   But it’s time to take some time off to rest, enjoy the weather and just step back from the extraordinary last few months that has rearranged all of our lives.   We’ll be back refreshed in September with many more amazing people for you to listen to and me to learn from. Thank you so much for joining me.  Now go forth, invest a little in your community and make some change!

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE. Eve Picker: [00:00:00] Hi there, thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing.   Eve: [00:00:06] My guest today is Donald Shoup. Dr. Shoup is a distinguished research professor with a focus on economics in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He began studying parking as a key link between transportation and land use with important consequences for cities, the economy and the environment. His book, The High Cost of Free Parking, turned an otherwise academic topic into a significant policy issue. A second book, Parking in the City showed that parking reforms can improve urban metro areas, both economically and environmentally.   Eve: [00:00:47] Be sure to go to evepicker.com to find out more about Donald Shoup on the show notes page for this episode. And be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small change.   Eve: [00:01:08] Hello, Donald. I'm really delighted that you've been able to join me today.   Donald Shoup: [00:01:13] Well, thanks for inviting me to Dallas.   Eve: [00:01:15] Yes. You've spent your career deeply immersed in parking and land economic issues, both of which are really hot button subjects right now. So, I'm wondering, first of all, how did you get interested in the economics of parking and why?   Donald: [00:01:33] Well, like everybody in parking, I think I backed in. Nobody wants to grow up to be in the parking business. They say, well, I was doing my PEC Dissertation in economics. I was working on land economics. So, I came to it from that angle looking at development and the value of land. And later on, I noticed that the market is the single biggest user of land of American citizens, the curb parking and the off-street parking. But it had almost no interest from any academic or even a lot of other professionals of the parking industry. But they were looking at it from the view of land economics. So, I had the field to myself for a long time. Donald: [00:02:29] Universities always strongly advocate equality and equity, but they are very rigidly hierarchical in their own operations. Everybody has different titles like Chancellor or the Vice Chancellor or the Deans and the Professors, and the Associate and Assistant Professors and lecturers and even the students, you know, the seniors and juniors and sophomores and freshmen. So, I think it's not just that we're hierarchal, but the things we study are also hierarchical, like international affairs are very important and national affairs are too. But state affairs are very, a big step down and local affairs are parochial. And then I think the lowest status topic, you know, even in local government would be parking. So, I was a bottom feeder for about 30 years, but there was a lot of food at the bar. And that's, that's how I got into parking. It was so easy to discover new things that nobody, well not many people, have been paying attention. But now there's almost a feeding frenzy. A lot of people are getting to study, at least among academics, or just studying parking and its effects. I think that's what you're interested in, not parking itself but how it affects the real estate of the city and the economy.   Eve: [00:03:58] Yes, and housing, right? So, you said it takes up a lot of land in American cities. How much land does parking take up on average?   Donald: [00:04:08] Well, nobody knows. It's highly regulated but the, no city, except San Francisco, has any census of parking that... You couldn't go to your city council or city planning department and say, how much parking is there in Dallas? They don't know. Although they regulate it very heavily on every site, there's no aggregate number that applies to all cities. But people who have looked at it in various ways think that, oh, maybe about 30 percent of the land is used for parking.   Eve: [00:04:48] Which is a lot of land. One of the statistics I read was that New York City, which has really high housing costs, actually is the eighth most affordable city out of 20 because the land is used really economically and there's less parking. The two certainly go hand in hand, don't they?   Donald: [00:05:10] Well, New York is a very special case, but most cities are like it. Several, the Department of Urban Planning's estimated there are about three billion on-the-street parking spaces in New York and nobody knows how many off-street parking spaces. But of those three million...   Eve: [00:05:29] That's a lot.   Donald: [00:05:29] …on-street spaces, only three percent have parking meters. So, 97 percent of all the car parking in Manhattan, in all of New York City, is free to the driver. So, of course, a terrific competition for it and it's a nightmare trying to find a parking space in Manhattan because it's free and lots of other people want it. So, there's an incredible amount of cruising around, hunting for parking. Seinfeld often talked about it. I think one time in an episode, George is coming to Jerry's apartment and Elaine is in the drivers, is in the passenger seat, and they can't find a parking space. And she said, well, let's park underground at the building. And he said, no, I never pay for parking. Paying for parking is like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay if, when I apply myself, maybe I can get it for free?   Donald: [00:06:31] So, I think that we've all been trying to get it for free for as long as we've had cars. And everybody wants to park free through to you and me, but we have twisted our cities is totally out of shape and real estate development totally out of shape with parking requirements that ensure that every new development has to have plenty of parking. So that won't overcrowd the free curb parking. So, I think that I've seen studies. I think, yes, the Department of Commerce did one study saying that: What is the biggest impediment to real estate development? Is it property taxes? Is it leverage issues? And almost everybody says it was required parking.   Eve: [00:07:17] Yeah. And have you seen a shift at all, over time in the last decade or two, the attitude towards parking?   Donald: [00:07:25] Oh, I think so. I've recommended three basic things. One is to charge the right price for curb parking, which is the lowest price that cities can charge and still have one or two open spaces vacant. So, nobody can say there's a shortage of parking because everywhere they go, they'll see one or two open spaces. But like real estate that's valuable, it won't be free. And then to make this politically popular, because drivers don't want to pay, is that the cities dedicate the meter revenue to pay added public services on the metered streets. You know, fix the sidewalks, plant street trees, clean the sidewalks, extra, well I shouldn't say police patrol right now, but, extra security. And some say to give free Wi-Fi to everybody on the block that has market-priced curb parking. So that people can see the benefits of charging for parking. Instead of having the money disappear into the general fund. So that's one policy to charge the right price and the second is to spend the revenue on added public services. And then the third one is to remove off-street parking requirements.   Donald: [00:08:39] And you've seen, all three of these happening in various cities. Houston just recently increased the share of the city that has no parking requirements. Houston is famous for having no zoning, but it has very elaborate parking requirements, just like any other city. Except for downtown, that they recently increased the area of Houston that doesn't have any parking requirements. And some cities have removed parking requirements entirely. San Francisco removed all its parking, off-street parking requirements, and Buffalo did, Hartford and London and Mexico City. It's spreading. I think that I and other peoples have preached the gospel that parking requirements do a lot of damage, that they raise the price of housing, they increase traffic congestion, they increase air pollution, they even contribute to global warming.   Donald: [00:09:43] So, I've never heard anybody, planners say: no, minimum parking requirements do not have these effects. The opponents of parking requirements are proving with study after study saying how it reduces the available land for development because so much of the space has to go for required parking. And it does increase housing prices at, and the prices of everything, because the cost of parking is hidden in the prices of everything else. Parking requirements make parking better, but they make everything else worse. And, as I said, I've never heard any urban planner say: no, parking requirements do not have these bad effects. I don't think you could find any professional in the planning industry or development industry who would say: no, parking requirements do not have these effects.   Donald: [00:10:39] So, I think some cities have begun to remove their off-street parking requirements. Others have begun charging, you know, what I call the right price or demand-based price, based on the demand for this scarce land. And they're spending it all on the, spending the revenue in the immediate district. So, I think all these three things are happening. So, I think the future of parking's here is just not evenly spread.   Eve: [00:11:08] Right. So, you know, Covid19, the pandemic, has probably accelerated a bit of this thinking. I've been watching news about cities like Milan in Italy, grabbing street back for pedestrians before they're fully occupied by cars again. And I'm wondering if you believe any of that will sort of help accelerate a move towards less parking, more purposeful use of valuable land.   Donald: [00:11:40] I'm sure it will. Covid19 has opened our eyes to a lot of things and one of them is a transportation. People are saying cities with very few cars, but a lot of pedestrians, and a lot of cyclists, and people eating at outdoor restaurants on the curb lanes, they could see that this is a lot better looking than having all the curbs completely jammed with cars and other cars hunting for, to find spaces being vacated. So, I think that it will lead to big reforms and it already is. Many cities have suspended the requirements of parking that the required parking lots have to be used for parking. They say, oh, you could use them for restaurants, outdoor restaurants with widely separated tables.   Donald: [00:12:34] But now in Dallas and every other city, they would say, if you want to have more outdoor city, you have to have extra parking for it. Most cities don't allow parking to be converted into outdoor restaurants. Everybody wants to eat outdoors. But you can't allow the required parking spaces to be used for a restaurant because that's against the parking requirements. So, I think that cities are experimenting. I have no idea if Dallas has done it, but a lot of cities have allowed restaurants to expand into their parking lots for outdoor dining. It will show people that there are better uses for land than storing empty cars. And, even if they're used for storing empty cars, they're still vacant most of the time.   Eve: [00:13:21] They are, they're vacant.   Donald: [00:13:22] If there's all those building where the parking spaces are empty during the evening, schools -- the average car as parked ninety five percent of the time so there have to be an awful lot of parking spaces wherever you go, because how can you drive somewhere, where there isn't plenty of parking? But if we think, we thought of parking as free parking and, even in downtowns like in Dallas, a lot of the people who drive to work get free parking. Is it paid for by the employer? You get free parking where you work?   Eve: [00:13:57] I don't park. I live downtown and my office is two floors below where I live. So my commute is very short, and I rarely, rarely drive.   Donald: [00:14:08] But in your apartment, are there a parking space or two available to you?   Eve: [00:14:13] Well, I have a tiny little building that has two spaces for the entire building. It's a building I built so it's a bit unusual, it's probably not a fair comparison.   Donald: [00:14:23] How did you build it without a lot of parking?   Eve: [00:14:26] Because it's downtown and in downtown Pittsburgh there's no parking requirement for residential.   Donald: [00:14:32] Oh, you're in Pittsburgh?   Eve: [00:14:33] Yes, I am in Pittsburgh.   Donald: [00:14:35] Oh, I thought you were in Dallas.   Eve: [00:14:37] No, I'm in Pittsburgh. So, downtown Pittsburgh for quite a while has had a zero parking requirement for downtown residential.   Donald: [00:14:45] Yes, yes.   Eve: [00:14:46] Not that the market didn't demand parking, right? That was when the market, the downtown market started here for residential. It was very hard to get going because people wanted to park their cars downtown. But I think in the last 10 years, that's really shifted. But I can't say that's extended to other neighborhoods. Somehow people feel entitled to have a car and a parking space.   Donald: [00:15:11] Pittsburgh does a lot of things right. The director of your parking authority is very famous in the industry, David Onorato, and I think they have some very good ideas. Say around Carnegie Mellon University, the university is the one who pioneered the policy of charging demand-based prices for curb parking. You know, they monitor the occupancy rate and they recommend the price that should be charged. So the best spaces have higher prices, than the distant spaces. I don't know if it was in Pittsburgh, whether it was just an idea or whether it happened, but, in some city, say, a grocery store will have a meters by the, spaces near the front door.   Eve: [00:16:00] Oh, interesting. That's interesting.   Donald: [00:16:01] You pay for, at a meter. The rest of the lot is free, and the meter money goes to pay, to charity. So, when you put your money into the meter you know that it isn't going to programs, but it's going to a local charity and they say what it's going to. So, I think that's another way to slowly bring prices into managing and parking.   Eve: [00:16:26] Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, you see a lot of strip malls where, you know, you have a sea of parking out the front or even in small main streets where there are parking requirements that really, kind of, force architecture that's overwhelmed by vehicles. And I worked at the planning department for a while, and I know what it takes to change a code, you know, a zoning code with the requirements, it's a mammoth and expensive exercise. And so, we have many smaller boroughs all over the country that have pretty old zoning codes now that require parking, and I really wonder how they're going to shift into, sort of, this new thinking.   Donald: [00:17:14] Well, it is very difficult to reform zoning for parking piecemeal that often on individual developments the developer will ask for a variance and say that "I don't need so much parking as you should require" and they to get a consultant show that this is true. There's so much study goes in to say, "If we if we reduce the parking requirement, well what should the new parking requirement be?" because it's all pulled out of thin air, there's no science at all. I mean students learn nothing about parking in their graduate studies because the professors have nothing to teach them. But they do learn that whenever they have a development project of their studios, the thing they have to worry about most is the parking requirement.   Donald: [00:18:02] So I recommend that cities should just remove off-street parking requirements. As I say, in Buffalo they had pages, like Pittsburgh does, pages of parking requirements, and it was replaced by one sentence and the zone goes: there's no work parking required for any use. That was so much easier than saying, well, let's have a study and say should they be cut by 20 percent or 30 percent or maybe the parking for a nail salon is too high, or something like that? That it's better to, to just say there are no parking requirements except for handicap spaces and specially what they should look like - the landscaping of them, and the water run-off and the location. The quality of the parking is what planners should regulate, not the quality. But in the U.S. we have a huge quantity of very low quality urban designed parking.   Eve: [00:19:05] Why do you think there's so much resistance to that? I think it's a brilliant idea because a real estate developer who has financial risk in building a building is going to think very hard about how much parking they need to market their building.   Donald: [00:19:19] Of course, and they know how much a parking space costs. The ramp parking space will easily cost fifty thousand dollars. And whether we talk about the need for parking, they're not talking about how much, whether people are willing to pay that much. I don't want to get into today's particular issue about Black Lives Matter. One of the things that I did through the years, I pointed out the fact that parking requirements strongly discriminated against low income people. Now we have measures of the net wealth of the population, you know, all your assets, minus all your liabilities. And of course, many young people have a negative net worth because they have student debts and no assets. Maybe a car or a cell phone. But I have looked at the median net wealth of Black families is about seventeen thousand dollars. Where for white families another hundred and sixty thousand, I think now. But cities are requiring for apartments for low income people and for Black people, two parking spaces per residence. That makes, the parking spaces could easily cost more than 17,000 dollars each. And then there has to be parking at all the restaurants, and all the theaters and all the grocery stores and every place else. So, planners are willy-nilly requiring wildly expensive parking spaces that low income people cannot afford.   Eve: [00:20:53] Yeah.   Donald: [00:20:54] Can you think that one parking space is worth more than the median net wealth of the Black population in this country? And yet it is. You're saying oh, well, you need 10 spaces per thousand square feet for a fast food restaurant. They have no knowledge of how much parking spaces cost or what it does to the looks of the building or who can eat there and things like that. So, I think that everybody probably looks at systemic racism through their own lens but I think in planning for parking there is a bias against low-income people in general and because Blacks are a lower income, it's a it's a bias against Black.   Eve: [00:21:33] Yeah, I think you're probably right. So, I've been working with an architect in Australia who has been developing workforce housing for service workers like schoolteachers and firemen and policemen. I mean, the cost of housing is so high there they've been driven further and further away, which means there is a bigger and bigger requirement for them to own a vehicle, right? Which is expensive. So, they actually built a building with 30 units and every person who was going to buy a unit signed a petition, because this building was right next to a train station and a bike, and a bikeway right into downtown. And every person signed the petition saying they weren't going to have a car. They were going to give up their car. And all they wanted was a bicycle. So, and the town planning, you know the town council there agreed that they could just build a small bike garage, which saved them a lot of money because they didn't have to build those 20,000 or 30,000....   Donald: [00:22:33] As you point out, that if we have parking requirements everywhere, it'd be hard for low-income people to get an apartment close to where they're going to work because the whole city is spread apart, because, to make room for the parking.   Eve: [00:22:50] That's right.   Donald: [00:22:51] And I think that if a low-income person has to buy a car to get a job, which is mostly the case, that they have to support the car. They have to pay insurance, for repairs and everything else. So, I think we have systematically favored the car through parking requirements. It's something that more cities are beginning to look at and maybe, I hope, some of your listeners will think hard and say, well, yes, it's a house of cars, these parking requirements. What you asked a planner say, well, how was this parking requirement set? They can never tell you. They can tell you what it is when you go to the planning desk and say, I want to build a nail, you know, open up a new nail salon, they'll tell you how many parking spaces you have to have. But they have no idea where that number came from.   Eve: [00:23:42] Interesting.   Donald: [00:23:43] Or how it was derived. How would you set the parking requirement for a nail salon? And you probably know much more about real estate than most urban planners.   Eve: [00:23:53] Yeah, it's really tough and so, now with this pandemic, you know, we kind of got to take another look at mass transit as well. You know, how are people going to get around when they're worried about catching a virus?   Donald: [00:24:07] Well exactly? I think so. I think that well, that's a slightly different policy that I'm recommending but as related to it, that, at least in L.A. and I suppose, in Pittsburgh, that we were amazed at how little traffic there is during Covid when people are staying at home. You could drive anywhere in Los Angeles.   Eve: [00:24:30] Yes. Here too.   Donald: [00:24:32] You never would have gone there before because you'd know that the traffic congestion was so terrible. Say, we have a city of Long Beach, which is south of Los Angeles and adjacent to it, has express buses to UCLA, it's about a 30 mile trip. And the schedule before Covid it was, it took about, I think, 90 minutes or something like that, at an average of 15 miles an hour on the freeway. And now, during Covid it was a twenty-seven-minute trip. And so, how are you going to maintain that? And one of the things I recommend is, what we already have is called hot lanes. Do you have these?   Eve: [00:25:19] Yeah, yeah. We actually have a dedicated busway which is fantastic.   Donald: [00:25:24] That's what we need more of.   Eve: [00:25:26] Yeah, I know. I can get from downtown to the airport faster on the bus for $2.50 than I can possibly drive, and it drops me right out the front door and it's really pretty fabulous.   Donald: [00:25:39] Well we have, we have these high occupancy vehicle tollways. There's HOV lanes that solo drivers can buy into it, if they pay a toll. But there's an incredible amount of fraud on them. Because we have to have a transponder if you use the lane and if you say that you have three people in your car, you don't pay any toll. I've seen the estimates that 30 percent of all the solo drivers in the tollways are saying that they're a three-person carpool. So, they pay nothing and that bogs down the HOV lanes because they don't perform the way they should. So what L.A. is just about to try is to say we're going to change it that everybody pays on the tollways except vehicles that have five or more passengers. So, if you're a two-person carpool or a three-person carpool or four-person carpool, you still have to pay. Of course, you get a discount on a per-rider basis - four people in the car, each person only pays 25 percent of the toll. It would be very easy to police the requirements that there be five people in the car. It's very hard for the authorities to put cameras to look and see, to check whether you actually have two or three people in the car. So, but if it's HOV5, as they're calling it, I think our freeways will begin to work really well and that buses will be able to go at high speed. If you could have an express bus from Long Beach to UCLA, and it might take half an hour instead of an hour and a half now.   Eve: [00:27:20] Isn't that great?   Donald: [00:27:21] So that it's more land economics. The streets, your very valuable land and we're giving it away free. And any, any time something's very valuable and you're giving it away free there'll be a lot of competition for it. That's why there's this terrible congestion. And that leads to air pollution, fuel waste, global warming. I think I've been invited to Pittsburgh maybe only once.   Eve: [00:27:47] Oh, we'll have to invite you again.   Donald: [00:27:51] I really enjoyed it. It's a wonderful town, of course, and I think a lot of people are moving there, from New York... I remember one time there was and interviewer from New York and I had a nice event with him and then later I wanted to get in touch with him. It turned out he had moved to Pittsburgh because it was so expensive in New York and he thought he got a much better lifestyle for the price in Pittsburgh.   Eve: [00:28:17] Yeah, it's nice city. It's small, but there's one of everything. But listen, I have another question for you, because if I were an economist ,I'd be figuring this out and you probably already have. So, with all that extra toll money and meter money, what would you do with it? And what could you do with it? How much extra money? I mean, how could that make other people's lives better, or people who walk or bike or?   Donald: [00:28:44] You mean how could removing parking requirements?   Eve: [00:28:46] No, no just increasing the cost of those valuable spaces and the freeways, like charging more in tolls and charging more at meters and..   Donald: [00:28:58] Well, I think the key to it is to tell people that if we install, you don't have to install meters because you could pay for parking now with your cell phones. And some people, some new cars have that app right in the dashboard of the car, that will be much more common in the future that your car knows what is the price of parking, if it's a new one, knows from the web how much parking costs, off-street and on-street, and it guides you to a good parking space. And so, I think it'll be cashless for paying for parking in the future and frictionless and when you find a parking space you just touch a button on your dashboard and you're paying for parking because the car knows where it is and what the price of parking is and then when you leave it automatically stops paying for parking. It'll be more like making a long-distance telephone call in the old days when you just paid for how long you've talked, where you called. So it will be like charging just the market price, the lowest price that you could, the city could charge for one or two open spaces. When they do that, if they spend the money in the metered area, the people will understand the meters are really helping because, say in a business center, because many people from outside the district who are paying for parking. It's not, it's not a tax on the merchants. It's like putting a cash register out at the curb and the neighborhood gets the revenue.   Donald: [00:30:38] I think there was one place in Pittsburgh they were thinking of running the meters in the evening and people said no, and the city offered to run an express bus to downtown for free if...with the revenue. And they, that persuaded people, well, maybe we should run the meters in the evening if it gives us a free shuttle bus to where we want to go. I think that people ought to think of parking like, on-street and off-street, like real estate and you ought to allocate it. Why do we have expensive housing and free parking? We've got our priorities the wrong way around. We've just been doing the wrong thing for 100 years. And I think that it's catching up with us now and we have different issues. We have global warming to worry about and clearly, requiring ample free parking everywhere is not going to slow global warming. And I think that when you remove all street parking requirements, it'll mean there'll be a lot of land available for development.   Donald: [00:31:43] The New Urbanists recommend liner builders, I don't know if you've seen them in Pittsburgh but it would, it's an important issue here in California where there will be an office building in the center of a giant parking lot, or a mall in the center of a giant parking lot, and if you built housing or even offices around the perimeter and turned some of the required parking into the housing, the land is already assembled, there's no assembly problem. There's no remediation needed, and you wouldn't have to build underground parking. So, I think that some of these giant parking lots, when there's liner buildings built around the parking lot, as you walk down the sidewalk, it will look like a real city. It's only about 25 feet deep but behind it is what's left of the parking lot. But people will have to start paying for parking both on-street out off-street for this to work. I think there is a lot of land right where we want to have it, ready for development, especially for work-adjacent housing. I think if you want housing / job balance, having the, building housing right on the parking lot of an office building is a great way to get it.   Eve: [00:33:04] And so, what's next for you? What are you working on? More parking or something different?   Donald: [00:33:12] Well, a couple of things. There is a thing I think I sent you. It was a new kind of zoning, zoning for land assembly. There was a problem in older areas, yes well, Pittsburgh is a good example, but L.A. has a lot of old development but there are a lot of very small parcels. Very small businesses, or small houses and now they're near a rail transit stop and it's very hard to assemble that land to build high density housing because of the hold-out problem. Everybody thinks that I'm going to be the key parcel that, if I'll hold out for a high price to get my share of the of the gain when they build a 10-storey building on this land. But if everybody thinks that way, everybody holds out and it's very hard to assemble land. Well, there was a new idea that was pioneered here in Southern California, that there was an area that had in Simi Valley that had very narrow lots but very deep because it had been an equestrian subdivision from the 1920s. So, each lot was about an acre or two but they were fairly narrower along the street.   Eve: [00:34:35] Interesting.   Donald: [00:34:36] They wanted to redevelop it but it was very hard to assemble the land because it had been with various families since the 1920s. And I think it was the mayor who thought of it, he said, well, let's say if you have more than five acres, we'll double the allowed density. And everybody began to think, well, you mean if I'm part of a land assembly the zoning will go up? And if I hold out it won't? And so, people began talking to each other, saying should we participate in a land assembly? And then people began to fear them being left out. That if some of the neighbors were beginning to agree to sell their land, some of which was vacant, there were no housing on it, some of which were vacant, if they sell their land and I can't be part of a new five-acre development I'll not be able to get this high density. And within a year after developers, maybe like you, real estate dealers had tried to organize land assembly that had never happened, within a year they'd assembled all but about three pieces of property. And within two years later, they have two hundred and seventy single-family houses at very high density over this county where there had been 13 before. So, I think this is, it's called graduated density zoning. The larger your parcel, the higher the density that's allowed so that people will begin to cooperate. Should we cooperate? And that means that the landowners will get a good deal for selling the land. They know they're selling for a higher-density developer. So, the people bidding for the land will have to offer them a price which is appropriate for land that will be rezoned as soon as the assembly happens. So that's, it's been spreading. Not as fast as I had hoped. But I think for older areas, for where the city wants land assembly, for more housing and certainly for more tax revenue, I think this graduated density zoning, as it's called, is a good idea. So that's one of the ways that's really not parking oriented. But also, it's easier to provide the required parking on a big piece of land, say, that any older buildings, like the one you're in, couldn't have been developed with a parking requirement because you can't get the parking and the building onto the same small site.   Eve: [00:37:18] Yes, you can't.   Donald: [00:37:20] So I think that this land assembly is, where the city wants it and where were the neighbors agree to it and they realize that, well, this is, what is the term, under-improved is that a term that's used in real estate? You know where there's just a shack on valuable land, but that shack is somebody's home. And if they have to move, they'll have to get something else unless they can sell their under-improved land for, to make way for a higher, higher density. And if the city provides, you know, requires some affordable housing and I guess they're giving away an increase in density they can then require affordable housing in some of the units. So, I think there are some good ideas out there.   Eve: [00:38:12] Yes, definitely. So, I especially like the no parking requirement idea. And I hope it takes hold really soon. And thank you very much for chatting with me.   Donald: [00:38:24] Ok, it was fun talking to you and I'm happy to be reminded of my happy visit to Carnegie Mellon.   Eve: [00:38:32] Ok. Thank you so much.   Donald: [00:38:34] You're welcome.   Eve: [00:38:35] Bye.   Eve: [00:38:36] That was Donald Shoup. He has a simple fix for the chaotic and varied parking requirements in U.S. cities. Remove the many, many pages of complicated parking regulations and replace them with one short sentence instead. No parking required. In the end, developers know best how much parking, if any, is needed. Parking, as Dr. Shoup points out, is an expensive use of our land. New York City, for example, has three million on-street parking spaces and 95 percent of them are free. If people paid for parking, those funds could be put towards making streets and sidewalks more attractive with more amenities for everyone. That sounds like a great plan to me.   Eve: [00:39:26] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today's episode at my website evepicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities.   Eve: [00:39:44] Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And thank you, Donald, for sharing your thoughts. We'll talk again soon but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

In this episode we talk to parking thought leader Donald Shoup about his back story and how he got started on his parking journey and where it has taken him.

What do comedy and fighting the war on cars have in common? For answers, Doug talks with Adam Conover, the creator and host of TruTV's “Adam Ruins Everything.” The show, a new season of which premieres on August 13th, combines humor, sharp writing and deeply sourced research to deconstruct the conventional wisdom about subjects most Americans take for granted, including cars. In this special one-on-one interview, Adam explains why taking the bus in LA is better than driving, discusses how excited he was to tell people the history of the word “jaywalking,” and offers lessons on presenting information to anyone fighting their own war on cars. Support The War on Cars on Patreon and receive stickers, T-shirts, exclusive access to special audio content and more. Buy an official War on Cars T-shirt at Cotton Bureau. Rate and review The War On Cars on iTunes. SHOW NOTES: A new season of “Adam Ruins Everything” premieres on August 13th on TruTV. Listen and subscribe to “Factually! With Adam Conover” from Earwolf. Adam explains the origins of the word “Jaywalking.” Adam and an animated Donald Shoup discuss the high cost of free parking. Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1, Doug Gordon@BrooklynSpoke, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek Questions? Suggestions? Email us: thewaroncars@gmail.com.

In this episode, Horace and Oliver discuss Donald Shoup’s work, The High Cost of Free Parking, and why micromobility offers such a compelling counter to the dominant mindset that has existed around parking for the last 70 years.Specifically, we cover:- The financial and spatial impact of parking minimums in the US- The Catch-22 of parking legislation - parking creates sprawled landscapes that increases the need for them to move around.- The importance of pricing parking appropriately- The odd behaviour that our misplacing of car parks has created in Japan and the US- The logical use case for autonomy in RV’s if we can’t better price/allocate roadspace- Why micromobility offers such a fundamental rethink of space allocation and parking requirements

By his estimation, Donald Shoup, FAICP, thinks about parking more than anybody else. That seems plausible, as he's been a longtime advocate for progressive parking policy. In fact, his ideas have spread so widely that not only does he have fans, but they even have a nickname for themselves: "Shoupistas." Don is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA, author of the seminal High Cost of Free Parking, and editor of the recent Parking and the City. He chats with host Courtney Kashima, AICP, about how he got into the transportation subfield and how, throughout his career, he has tried to further equitable policies and correct market and government failures when it comes to parking. He describes his basic thesis from The High Cost of Free Parking, which is that cities should (1) get rid of all minimum parking requirements, (2) charge demand-based prices for on-street parking, and (3) spend the revenue to pay for public services in the metered neighborhood. He and Courtney discuss those tenets as well as new parking-payment technologies, the growing need to better manage curb space, and even a bit of Roman history, all with Don's trademark passion and humor.

This week Patrick Siegman joins us to chat on the topic of parking. We chat about the etymology of the word parking, the legend that is Donald Shoup, and why the topic of parking gets so personal.

This month on the Rail~Volution podcast, Patrick Siegman joins us to chat on the topic of parking. We chat about the etymology of the word parking, the legend that is Donald Shoup, and why the topic of parking gets so personal.

The Best of 2017 - 26 minutes of snippets of some of the policies, persons and personalities that defined the Soul of California this year. In the following order:  UCLA's Donald Shoup on why company parking is massively unjust:  Bassist Nathan East on picking up a guitar for the first time; Secretary Norman Mineta on being a “non-alien” of Japanese ancestry during WWII;  Mural Queen Judy Baca on “getting caught” painting on her boss's wall with gang members;  Rocker Chuck Prophet on Bobby Fuller's legacy and California Noir;  Stanford's Clayborne Carson on Martin Luther King, Jr's most memorable speech;  Betty Reid Soskin and the reaction that her park ranger uniform evokes; Literary statesman T.C. Boyle on human nature and the dying off of a species;  Jim Harris on the mythic ending of Route 66;  Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez on what he would tell himself as a teen-ager;  UC Berkeley's Michael Dear on why walls don't work;  Biographer Earle Labor on Jack London's farcical struggles with immediate and ultimate happiness;  Writer Steven Provost on James Dean's last meal (and speeding ticket); Novelist Dana Johnson on how well-told accomplishments and not-so-well-told accomplishments make some immortal and some (undeservedly) forgotten.      Thanks for listening to the show this year. Please don't forget to share. After all, it's the holiday season. Grab a cup of something hot and strong and hit the play button…. Have a good holiday and a great new year.  Feed your soul. Keep listening.   

This episode features thoughts on parking by expert Donald Shoup, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, LA.

This episode features thoughts on parking by expert Donald Shoup, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, LA.

We're all guilty of it, cruising for parking, hoping for a free space. But what's the downside? In this 33-minute podcast, UCLA's Donald Shoup gives us a rundown on parking's catastrophic inefficiencies, highlighting poor policy and planning and the outright injustice of the entire sector.  Donald shares how he became involved in the sector, the actual cost of a parking space ($20,000+ for surface, $30,000+ for underground, even up to $80,000!), LA's revolutionary “adaptive re-use” policy allowing for dozens of buildings to be refurbished (creating a real estate boon) and the policy of required spaces for restaurants and shopping malls.  With candor and subtle humour, Shoup advocates introduction of paid parking, the use of revenues locally and the end of the broken model of “each apartment must have two parkings spots”.  Next time: bassist Nathan East, Clapton's bassist, 25% of the Jazz quartet Fourplay and session player on 2,000 (yes, 2,000) albums talks about starting out in a San Diego church, on stage at the Apollo at 16 and his new album Reverence.   Feed your soul. Keep listening.   

In this 20-minute podcast, Wild Records founder Reb Kennedy shares his experiences in starting an East LA-based record label from scratch. Reb discusses his approach to finding promising, yet struggling and immature bands and turning them into proper acts. Over the course of the last 15 years, Reb has played a number of roles with his label's musicians - manager, producer, agent, mentor, psychologist, surrogate father (and mother).  The podcast includes snippets of "Broke his heart" by the Rhythm Shakers in the intro and "Silhouette" by TJ Mayes in the outro…..For the entire offering, check out wildrecordsusa.com. You won't be disappointed.  Next episode - the High Cost of Free Parking. UCLA's Donald Shoup, Parking Guru, reveals the issue's enormous indirect impacts and offers some remedies.  Feed your soul. Keep listening. 

This 32-minute episode takes a look back at a few of this year's best stories and reflections.  In the following order, we have:  Shelly Spiegel-Coleman on the need for a dignified and humane approach to the treatment of illegal immigrants and their families;  Sabrina Fendrick of Berkeley Patients Group on the domination of women in the cannabis industry;  Emily Burns of Save the Redwoods Alliance on how carbon is measured in giant Sequoia and Redwood trees. Alan Hess on William Pereira's reputation among the East Coast elite and how he was “Hollywood's version of an architect”;  Magnus Torén of the Henry Miller Library on the development challenges of Big Sur - “it's being loved to death”;  multi-instrumentalist Louise Goffin on why the piano is her favourite instrument.  Daniel Ostroff on how he inadvertently started collecting Charles and Ray Eames; Jon Christensen on Reyner Banham and why living in LA is actually better than visiting it.  Justin Akers Chacon on the irony of how drastic immigration legislation had a dramatic economic effect in some towns;  Samantha Schoech of Independent Bookstore Day comparing books with the vinyl revival and the staying power of paper books. Grant Lee Phillips recounting his salad days as a 13-year old magician in bars and clubs off of Route 99;  Mary Colwell on John Muir's theory of glaciers as to the real reason why Yosemite is so spectacular;  Tom Williams on “catching a glimpse” of his subject when reading a series of unreleased letters from Raymond Chandler to his childhood friends; Kevin Break on the peace, quiet and bustling nature of the LA River at 2am.  Next episodes include US parking guru Donald Shoup and Reb Kennedy of Wild Records.  Thanks for listening to the show this year. Please don't forget to leave a review.  Have a good holiday and a great new year. Feed your soul. Keep listening.   

What follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Emily Hamilton about land use regulations' effects on affordable housing. Petersen: My guest today is Emily Hamilton. She is a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Emily, thanks for being on Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me. Petersen: So, Emily recently wrote a paper titled "How Land Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing" along with her co-author Sanford Ikeda. The paper is a review of many studies looking at land use restrictions and it identifies four of the most common types of land use restrictions. Those are: minimum lots sizes, minimum parking requirements, inclusionary zoning, and urban growth boundaries. So Emily, could you tell us what each of those restrictions entail? Hamilton: Sure. So, starting off with the first, minimum lots sizes. This is probably what people most commonly associate with zoning. It's the type of Euclidian zoning that separates residential areas from businesses and then within residential areas limits the number of units that can be on any certain size of land. And this is the most common tool that makes up what is sometimes referred to as Snob Zoning, where residents lobby for larger minimum lots sizes and larger house sizes to ensure that their neighbors are people who can afford only that minimum size of housing. Petersen: So it keeps the poor away, effectively. Hamilton: Exactly. And then parking requirements are often used as a tool to ensure that street parking doesn't get too congested. So when cars first became common, parking was really crazy where people would just leave their car on the street, maybe double parked, or in an inconvenient situation near their destination. And obviously as driving became more and more common and that was just an untenable situation and there had to be some sort of order to where people were allowed to park. But street parking remained typically free or underpriced relative to demand. So, people began lobbying for a parking requirement that would require business owners and residential developers to provide parking that was off streets so that this underpriced street parking remained available. But that brought us to today where we often have just mass seas of parking in retail areas and residential areas, which are paper focuses on. Parking substantially contributes to the cost of housing, making it inaccessible in some neighborhoods for low income people and driving up the cost of housing for everyone who has been using the amount of parking that their developer was required to provide. Petersen: So that's one where you can really see the original justification. And it makes sense, if you have a business and a lot of people are parking and it spills over onto the street then maybe that's an externality. And it seems reasonable for you to have to provide parking for the people who come to your business, especially if a lot of them are driving there. But we push that too far, is what I'm hearing. Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah, it does seem reasonable but the argument in favor of parking requirements tends to ignore that business owners have every incentive to make it easy to get to their business. So, in many cases there's not necessarily an externality because the business owner providing the parking has the right incentive to provide enough to make it easy for their customers to get there. The externality really comes up when we think about street parking and Donald Shoup---probably the world's foremost expert on parking---has made the argument that pricing street parking according to demand is a real key in getting parking rules right. Petersen: So, on to the next one. What is inclusionary zoning? Hamilton: Inclusionary zoning is a rule that requires developers to make a certain number of units in a new development accessible to people at various income levels. Often inclusionary zoning is tied with density bonuses. So, a developer will have the choice to make a non-inclusionary project that is only allowed to have the regular amount of density that that lot is zoned for. Or, he can choose to take the inclusionary zoning density bonus which will allow him to build more units overall including the inclusionary unit and additional market-rate units. Typically, units are affordable to people who are making a certain percentage of the area median income, so people who might not have low income but who are making not enough to afford a market rate unit in their current neighborhood. Petersen: Okay, so that's sort of forcing developers to build affordable units that they then will probably lose money on, so that they can build the market rate units that they can make money on. Hamilton: Exactly. That's how cities make inclusionary zoning attractive to developers is by giving them that bonus that can allow them to build more market rate housing. In other cities, however, inclusionary zoning is required for all new developments so it really varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction how it's implemented. Petersen: So the fourth land use restriction you mention is urban growth boundaries. What are those? Hamilton: So Oregon is the most famous example in the US of implementing an urban growth boundary. And what it is, is basically a state law that requires each city to set up a boundary around its edges, where for a certain amount of time no housing can be built outside of that boundary. And the idea is to gradually expand the city's footprint over time to allow the suburbs to expand a little further, but to restrict that suburban development using the boundary for some time period. Other examples like London's urban growth boundary I believe are permanent, so there are certain areas that can never be developed. Petersen: So I believe we have something like this in Vancouver. We have farmland in the metro Vancouver area which---for context this area is one of the most overheated high-priced housing markets in the world---and we have this land that's just zoned for farms. And a lot of the time people don't even bother to plant crops, they're just holding the land for the day when eventually it can be rezoned into housing. So I looked it up before we went on and some of these plots are $350,000 an acre, which of course is not reflective of just how productive they are as farmland but of how productive they would be when they are eventually rezoned. Hamilton: Exactly. Yes, very similar to Oregon's program. And a lot of empirical studies have been done on Portland's growth boundary because researchers can easily look at the block that are selling on either side of the boundary to see whether or not it's affecting land prices and several studies have found a very clear effect of the boundary in driving up the price of the land. Petersen: And in Vancouver, the city is very reluctant to rezone. So, people are constantly applying and being denied but you know it's like winning the lottery having your bit of useless farmland rezoned to super high value housing. And people are just holding on to those dead lands in the hopes of winning that lottery which is kind of---it's a bizarre outcome. Hamilton: It is. And urban growth boundary supporters often frame it as environmental regulation that's going to protect this open space. While encouraging people to live in more dense and transit and walkable friendly neighborhoods, but it's not as if Portland is free of other types of zoning rules. So at the same time it has this urban growth boundary it also has a lot of traditional zoning rules that limit the potential to build up while the growth boundary is limiting the potential to grow out. So it's coming from both directions. Petersen: So, just how costly do economists think these regulations are? What kind of estimates do they have? Hamilton: So, I think some of the most compelling estimates look at the macroeconomic effect of these rules. Because typically the most binding zoning rules are also in the most productive cities, where there's the highest level of demand for people to live. Because these are where the best jobs are as well as the best urban amenities, a lot of people want to live here. One study looking at this macroeconomic effect found that the three most productive cities which are New York, San Francisco, and San Jose---I should clarify; this is just looking at the effective growth within US---if those three cities lowered the burden of their land use regulation to that of the median American city it could result in a 9% increase in the level of US GDP. So, these rules are having just an enormous effect on economic growth. Not to mention the very substantial effect they have for individuals and making it difficult or impossible for people to afford to live in their desired location. Petersen: So, you know, San Francisco that's where Silicon Valley is. And so we think of it as a place with super high productivity---tech workers working at Google---and yet with their housing market being one of the most restricted. So not only is there the loss from the housing market itself, that you could sell a lot of housing there and that would increase GDP by itself, but also there are people living in less productive areas doing less productive jobs, who could come and work for Google. But they can't because they've been priced out of the market. Is that where most of the effect comes from? Hamilton: That's right. Yeah, I think the effect is also certainly at that top-end of the market where we're seeing all kinds of blog posts and articles about a person making six figures at Facebook who can't afford the Bay area. So those people might choose to go live in say Denver, or Austin, or a city that still has plenty of great jobs but isn't as productive as San Francisco or San Jose. But then we also see this down the income spectrum, where people who are in the service industry, say waiting tables, could make much more in San Francisco then they can in Houston, or wherever they happen to live. But their quality of life is much better in some of less productive cities because of the cost of housing and other areas of consumption that higher real estate costs drive up. Petersen: One thing I've heard about a lot of these Californian coastal cities---I think it was Palo Alto---where not a single member of the Palo Alto Police Department lives in Palo Alto because you just can't live there on a policeman's salary, so they all have to commute in every day and then commute out every night. Hamilton: Yeah, and for some of these hugely important needed services it just makes the quality of life of the people in those industries so much worse than it would be if they could afford to live closer to their job. Petersen: Right. So, to summarize the labor market mobility of the United States in general has been greatly restricted by these land use restrictions. Even though the land use restrictions are local, this has an effect on the national economy. Hamilton: Exactly right. And we can see this in the data where income convergence across areas of the country has greatly slowed down since the 1970's when these rules really started taking off. Petersen: You argue that the costs of these restrictions fall primarily on low-income households so can you talk through how that happens? Hamilton: Sure. It happens in two ways. First off, you have the low income people who are living in very expensive cities and these people might have to endure very long commutes---you talked about the police officer in Palo Alto who can't live anywhere near his job. Not that police officers are low income, but just as an example that illustrates the point. Or they have to live in very substandard housing, perhaps a group house that's just crammed with people maybe even illegally, in order to afford to live anywhere near where they're working. Petersen: Yeah, I was going to say I thought those group houses were illegal from these very same land use regulations, but I guess people get around it. Hamilton: Yeah, a lot of US cities have rules about the number of unrelated people who can live in a house. And certainly those rules are sometimes broken. That, I think, is clear to anyone who's spent time in an expensive city. You know, people have to live in these less than ideal conditions and waste too much of their time commuting in order to make that work. But the unseen version of it is the person who lives in a low-income part of the country and would like to improve their job opportunity and quality of life by moving to somewhere more productive, but they simply can't make it work so they stay in that low-income area without meeting their working potential. Petersen: There was a study by David Autor---I think I cited it in a previous episode and got the author name wrong but it's definitely David Autor---and it was looking at the shock, the trade shock that hit United States when it opened up trade with China in the early 2000's. And it basically showed that a lot of parts of the country just never recovered. So, if you worked in particular industries---I think the furniture industry was one that was basically wiped out---and if you worked in a town next to a furniture factory and that was your job, not only did you lose your job, you lost all the value in your home because the one industry in the town is gone. And you can't afford to move to one of the booming industries like Silicon Valley or in another part of the country because they've so greatly restricted the elasticity of their housing supply. And that's not all, Autor's paper basically just shows that it took a very long time to recover from the shock and a lot of places didn't recover at all. But I really think that housing is part of that picture if you're trying to figure out why the US economy can't respond to shocks like it used to in the 20th century. That has to be a big part of the picture. Hamilton: Definitely. And that trend, as far as people being able to leave these depressed or economically stagnant areas, this also comes out in the income's convergence as we talked about earlier. Petersen: So, the other part of that, I saw in your paper, was not only are poor people hurt but rich people who already own homes have seen those home prices rise. So it's affecting inequality at both ends of the spectrum, correct? Hamilton: Right, Bill Fischel at Dartmouth has done a lot of work on why it is that people lobby so hard in favor of rules that restrict development. And he terms it as the Homevoter Hypothesis, where people who own homes have a huge amount of their wealth tied up in their home and so they are in favor of rules that protect that asset and prevent any shocks such as a huge amount of new development that could result in a decline in their homes value. I think you talked about that in your episode with Nolan Gray on trailer parks. Petersen: Yeah, we talked about William Fischel's Homevoter Hypothesis. So the essence of that is that people vote in local elections, and they lobby to restrict the supply of housing in their neighborhood, and that increases their wealth by, you know, increasing the land values in that area. How do you deal with that when there's such an entrenched special interest everywhere to push up land prices? Hamilton: I think that's the hugely difficult problem. And at the same time as we have the challenges with the Homevoter system that Fischel plays out, we have a lot of federal policies that encourage homeownership as not just a good community-building tool but also as an investment. So people are programmed by the federal government to see their house as an investment in spite of economic challenges that it presents. David [Schleicher]---a law professor at Yale---has done some really interesting work on ways that institutional changes could limit the activity of homeowners and lobbying against new development. One of his proposals is called a Zoning Budget. And under a zoning budget, municipalities would have to allow a certain amount of population growth each year. So, they could designate areas of a city that are going to only be home to single family homes, but within some parts of the city, they would have to allow building growth to accommodate a growing population. Petersen: How would that be enforced, though? Hamilton: It would have to be a state law, or perhaps a federal law, but I think much more likely a state law that would mandate that localities do that. Massachusetts recently passed a law that requires all jurisdictions within the state to allow at least some multifamily housing. So it's kind of a similar idea. The state government can set a floor on how much local government can restrict development. Petersen: So, what I'm hearing is that different levels of government have different incentives with respect to restrictions. So, at the lowest level if I'm just in a small district or municipal area and I can restrict what my neighbors build on their property, that really affects my home price and that's the main thing that I'm going to lobby for at that level of government. But if I had to go all the way to the state government to try to push up house prices in my neighborhood, it wouldn't go so well. The state government has incentives to allow more people to live within their boundaries. Is that the gist of it? Hamilton: Yeah, that's right. It's easy to imagine a mayor of a fancy suburban community who simply represents his constituents' views that the community already has enough people, you know, life there is good and so nothing needs to change. But, I don't think that you'd find a Governor that would say "Our state doesn't need any more people or economic growth." So the incentives are less in favor of homeowners, local homeowners, the further up you go from the local to state jurisdiction. Petersen: Right. I guess a big issue is that the people who would like to move somewhere but live somewhere else don't get to vote in that place's elections or in their ballot measures. And so there's this group that has an interest in lower housing costs because they might move to your city or your town, if they could afford it, but they're not represented politically in that city or town and so they can't vote for more housing and lower prices. But then when you go to the whole state level and people are mobile within a state, those people do have a say or they are represented and pricing them out of the places they'd like to live really is bad for politics, bad for getting their votes. Hamilton: Right. So the Palo Alto police officer can't vote to change Palo Alto's policies but he can vote to change California policy. Petersen: Right, because he still lives within California. So one of the other policy recommendations I saw in your paper is tax increment local transfers or TILTs. What are they and how can they impact land use restrictions? Hamilton: That's another idea that comes from David Schleicher and I think it's another really interesting concept. The idea behind TILT is that a new development increases the property tax base within a jurisdiction. So, if you have a neighborhood, say a block full of single family homes that is allowed to be sold to a developer in order to build a couple of large apartment buildings, each apartment is going to be less expensive than the previous single family homes, but overall the apartment buildings will contribute more to property tax. And the idea behind a TILT is that part of this tax increment---which is the difference between the new tax base and the previous smaller tax base---could be shared with neighbors to the new development to kind of buy off their support for the development. So, those people who are in some sense harmed by the new buildings, whether in terms of more traffic or a change in their neighborhood's character, also benefit from the new building financially. So they're more likely to support it. Petersen: So economists talk about Potential Pareto Improvements, where you have a situation where some people are made better off while other people are worse off, but you could have a transfer to make everyone better off. And what I'm hearing with TILTs is you actually do that transfer, you actually pay off the losers with some of the surplus you get from the winners. So everyone can be better off when you make this overall beneficial change. Hamilton: Exactly. And sometimes communities do use community benefit as a tool to try to get developers to share their windfall and build a new project with the neighborhood. So they might say, "you can build an apartment building here, but you also have to build a swimming pool that the whole neighborhood can use at this other location," and in a way that achieves the end goal of buying off community support for new development. But it also drives up the cost of the new housing that the developer can provide. So TILTs have the advantage of keeping the cost of building the same for the developer, but still sharing that financial windfall of the new development with a broader group of people. Petersen: Yeah, I really like these policy recommendations. It would be so easy to just say "land use restrictions are bad, let's not have those anymore." But these really have an eye to the political structures that we currently have and towards making progress within the structure we have. So I like that approach to policy or to policy recommendations. I think economists should maybe do that more often. Hamilton: Yeah, looking for a win-win outcome. Petersen: The one other one that I don't think we've talked about is home equity insurance, which sounds like a business plan more than a policy proposal. But how can home equity insurance help to reduce the costs of land use restrictions? Hamilton: That proposal also came from Bill Fischel a couple of decades ago following on his work of the Homevoters theory. He proposed the idea that the reason home owners are so opposed to new development is often because they have so much of their financial wealth tied up in this house that they're not just opposed to a loss in their investment, but even more so, opposed to risk. So they want the policies that they see will limit the variance in their home equity and he proposed home equity insurance as a financial goal that could lower this threat and provide homeowners with a minimum amount of equity that they would have regardless to the new development. I think it's a really interesting concept but it's unclear, would this be a private financial product? Obviously the market isn't currently providing it, or would it be some kind of government policy? And while I do think it's very interesting, I think that we should be somewhat leery of new government policies that promote homeownership as a financial wealth building tool. Petersen: Well, the funny thing is that usually with insurance, if you have fire insurance you want to minimize the moral hazard of that, you don't want people to say: "Well I've got fire insurance so I don't have to worry about fires anymore." But with this, you sort of want that, you have insurance on the value of your home and then actually your goal is to make people less worried about the value of their home so that they will be okay with policies that reduce it. It's almost the opposite of what you want with insurance most of the time. In this case you want to maximize moral hazard. Hamilton: Yeah that's a great point and I think that's why it could only be a government product. Petersen: Right. Because if the private sector was providing home price insurance to homeowners then the company that provided the insurance would now have an incentive to lobby against upzoning the neighborhood. Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah it would create a new a new group of NIMBYs. Petersen: Yeah, at first I thought 'Oh great!', well this is something that we can just do, without the government. You can just get a bunch of people together, who have an interest in making cities more livable and they can provide this financial asset. But that seems like there are problems with it that are hard to overcome within the private sector. So overall do you think the tide might be turning on the NIMBYs? Are people becoming more aware of this issue and of land use restrictions and their effects on housing prices? Hamilton: I do think awareness is growing. There's a group popping up called YIMBY which stands for "Yes In My Backyard" as opposed to the suburban NIMBY to say "Not In My Backyard" to any sort of new development. And these YIMBY groups are gaining some traction in cities like San Francisco and lobbying in favor of new development to counter the voices that oppose new development. I am somewhat pessimistic, I have to say, just because from a public choice standpoint the forces in favor of land use regulations that limit housing are so powerful. But in spite of my pessimism, I'm seeing since the time that I started working on this issue several years ago, much more coverage of the issue from all kinds of media outlets, as well as much more interest in on-the-ground politics from people who aren't in the typical homeowner category. Petersen: Yeah, and I am hopeful too. But I often see people blame other factors for high home prices. They blame the speculators. The speculators are always the ones that are pushing up home prices. And rarely, I think, do people blame restrictions, although the YIMBY movement is a happy exception to that. Hamilton: Yeah, I think way too often real estate developers are framed as the enemy in these debates because they're the ones who make money off building new housing. But it's really the regulations that are to blame both for the inordinate profits that developers can make in expensive cities, and for the high costs of housing. Petersen: Do you have any closing thoughts about land use restrictions? Hamilton: I think that it's just really important to try to spread the message about the costs that these regulations have. Not just for low-income people but for the whole country and world economic growth. That's obviously a cause that I would think everyone would be behind: creating opportunity for people to live in the most productive cities where they can contribute the most to society and to the economy. Petersen: My guest today has been Emily Hamilton. Emily, thanks for being part of Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me.  

If you have any questions about parking, Donald Shoup will definitely know the answer. The Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA's Department of Urban Planning is the author of The High Cost of Free Parking and studies how parking...

Chuck Marohn interviews Donald Shoup, Distinguished Research Professor in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. His book, The High Cost of Free Parking, and his extensive research into the effects of parking on cities have made him a prominent voice on these topics. He joins Strong Towns for #BlackFridayParking week.

Donald Shoup is a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and the author of “The High Cost of Free Parking.” He is a certified guru and is often referred to as “The Godfather of Parking”. Alasdair invites him on to the show this week to share his wealth of information in the field of parking and […] The post Episode #06: Why Free Parking Does Not Work and What to Do About It with Donald Shoup appeared first on The Valet Spot.

Colin Marshall sits down at UCLA with urban planning professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking and the man who's made us aware of the fact that our cities' problems come not from too little parking, but too much. They discuss the academic tendency to believe, without verification, anything bad about Los Angeles; how this city became the densest car-oriented one in America, as well as the most car-oriented dense one; falsely perceived parking "shortages," how they led to minimum free parking requirements, and how those have worsened our urban experience; Los Angeles' parking requirement-skirting Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, which made even monstrosities like 1100 Wilshire usable; the development of technology needed to allow parking prices to respond to demand, and how it works in systems like San Francisco's SFPark; the importance of treating parking space just like any other real estate, and how irresponsible we've been about that; how Ventura streets got free wi-fi through their parking program; what ruined Westwood, and what parking policy had to do with it; how he realized parking mattered so much, and why the general public has only begun to; the necessity of humor when you're writing about parking for 800 pages; and how cycling makes it users happier than any other mode of transportation (perhaps because of its lack of parking complications).

Chris speaks with the acknowleged international guru on parking and seeks some insight, perhaps wisdom, into finding nirvana in this vexing urban planning conundrum.

Guest Dr. Donald Shoup, Professor of Urban Planning, University of California at Los Angeles, speaks with Diane Horn about the high cost of free parking and proposes some new policies to solve our parking problems.