The Seaside Prize Returns

Honoring 2023 Winner Donald Shoup

Story and photography courtesy of the Seaside Institute

The Seaside Institute is pleased to announce that Donald Shoup, a distinguished research professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA, will be honored as the 2023 Seaside Prize recipient for his radical rethinking of parking policy. In his groundbreaking 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, and his work since then, Shoup changed how cities view the relationship between parking and the built environment, traffic congestion, energy consumption, and local economic development. The Institute will hold the Twenty-Ninth Annual Seaside Prize Weekend on February 24–26, 2023.

The Seaside Institute awards the Seaside Prize annually to individuals, organizations, or places that have made major contributions to the quality of the built community. Recipients have significantly influenced how towns and cities can best be built and rebuilt to reflect and promote New Urban principles, including walkability, affordability, diversity, beauty, and sustainability.

Last year’s winner, Jeff Speck, wrote in his seminal Walkable City Rules, “Parking covers more acres of Urban America than any one thing, and yet planners have neglected it for years—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 New York Times wrote that Shoup’s work “has led to a revolution in ideas about relieving congestion.” The High Cost of Free Parking and Shoup’s 2018 book, Parking and the City, remain classics in the fields of transportation and city planning. Jeffrey Tumlin, the author of Sustainable Transportation Planning, wrote, “If your city wants to focus on one topic for reducing traffic congestion, improving housing availability, cleaning the air, lessening climate change, making government more efficient, and enlivening the economy—all at the same time—then it should focus on parking.”

In addition to his position at UCLA, Shoup is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, an honorary professor at the Beijing Transportation Research Center, and a winner of the American Planning Association’s National Excellence Award as a Planning Pioneer and the American Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Distinguished Educator Award.

For Walton County, Florida, like other areas throughout the country and world, parking and traffic congestion are critical challenges. With wit and humor, Shoup will present solutions he discovered over many years of research.

You don’t have to be a planner to appreciate Dr. Shoup’s insights. His perspectives will enlighten everyone in our community on why ‘free parking is anything but free.’”

Former winner Speck expounds on the Seaside Prize program, “You are supposed to say it is humbling to win an award like this one, but that was not my experience. To receive the same prize as Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and my mentors Andrés Duany and Liz Plater-Zyberk filled me with great pride and a sense of obligation to do more important work.” He continues, “I was also delighted to learn that my weekend brought a larger and more diverse group of people to the event than in prior years. My role in this movement has always been to enlarge the tent—to make New Urbanism accessible and meaningful to more people—and I’m excited that it also made Seaside accessible to more people.”

The Seaside Prize Weekend includes guest lectures (some of which will be CEU accredited), the Seaside Prize Gala and awards ceremony, walking tours of Seaside, Alys Beach, and Rosemary Beach, and social gatherings.

“As the birthplace of New Urbanism, Seaside is the perfect home for this prize and the event honoring the winner,” says longtime Seaside Institute member Mark Schnell, principal of Schnell Urban Design. “The Seaside Prize Weekend gives practitioners within the movement an opportunity to return ‘home’ to a place that continues to be a remarkable laboratory for ideas. The Seaside Institute was born early in the community’s development, and its initiatives have always reflected and incubated those ideas.”

The weekend is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in New Urbanism, walkable communities, and human-scale planning and design, not just architects, planners, and design students. The community is invited to attend and learn why parking and traffic can be manageable with the right policies.

“If there was one event that brings together our entire community, with over one hundred and fifty participants in 2022, it is the Seaside Prize Weekend,” says Seaside Institute executive director Thomas Cordi. “Not only do we honor one of the most distinguished thinkers in the planning and architectural world, but we bring together other experts who have been influenced by his or her work, our members, and members of the community. It is a joyous celebration for all, and we hope you’ll join us for 2023! You don’t have to be a planner to appreciate Dr. Shoup’s insights. His perspectives will enlighten everyone in our community on why ‘free parking is anything but free.’”

In other news from the Seaside Institute, the organization recently announced the debut of its podcast! The series touches on the Institute’s core ideals of sustainability, adaptability, and connectivity, featuring critical topics in New Urbanism and connecting people with the Seaside Institute’s values and mission. Listeners can expect to hear discussions with Seaside Prize recipients and keynote speakers on future episodes, recorded in partnership with SOWAL House.

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2023 Seaside Prize tickets are available now; visit Seasideinstitute.org for more information. To become a member of the Seaside Institute, visit SeasideInstitute.org/membership. More on Donald Shoup can be found at ShoupDogg.com.