Shoup wins Seaside Prize
Note: Public Square editor Robert Steuteville is on leave, and will return at the end of October.
The 2023 winner of the Seaside Prize will be UCLA Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup, who has led an international movement against off-street parking requirements and transformed the thinking on automobile storage and the built environment. Shoup’s 2005 book The High Cost of Free Parking showed that parking can be a fascinating subject and demonstrated just how much parking has transformed cities, often for the worse.
Last year’s winner, Jeff Speck, wrote in Walkable City Rules: “Parking covers more acres of Urban America than any one thing, and yet planners have neglected it for years … that was until the research of one man, who helped change the way planners think about parking forever.” That man was Donald Shoup. As noted in The Wall Street Journal, Shoup is described as a “parking rock star” whose works have inspired a group of followers dubbed Shoupistas.
The ceremony will take place February 24-26, 2023 in Seaside, Florida, and the award is bestowed by the Seaside Institute. CNU Executive Director Rick Cole will deliver the keynote among a number of other tributes to Shoup's impact. As Mayor of Pasadena, Cole pushed the "Park Once" strategy that helped revitalize the city's historic core and was an early case study often cited in Shoup's work.
This will be the 29th Seaside Prize, and past winners read like a who’s who of urbanism in recent decades, includiung six founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism—Peter Calthorpe, Daniel Solomon, Elizabeth Moule, Stefanos Polyzoides, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Andres Duany.
