American drivers park for free on nearly ninety-nine percent of their car trips, and cities require developers to provide ample off-street parking for every new building. The resulting cost? Today we see sprawling cities that are better suited to cars than people and a nationwide fleet of motor vehicles that consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. Donald Shoup contends in "The High Cost of Free Parking" that parking is sorely misunderstood and mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians. He proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking so that Americans can stop paying for free parking's hidden costs.

Preface , The Twenty-first Century Parking Problem , Planning for Free Parking , Unnatural Selection , The Pseudoscience of Planning for Parking , An Analogy: Ancient Astronomy , A Great Planning Disaster , The Cost of Required Parking Spaces , Putting the Cost of Free Parking in Perspective , An Allegory: Minimum Telephone Requirements , Public Parking in Lieu of Private Parking , Reduce Demand Rather than Increase Supply , Cruising for Parking , Cruising , The Right Price for Curb Parking , Choosing to Cruise , California Cruising , Cashing in on Curb Parking , Buying Time at the Curb , Turning Small Change into Big Changes , Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad , Let Prices Do the Planning , The Ideal Source of Local Public Revenue , Unbundled Parking , Time for a Paradigm Shift , Conclusion , Changing the Future , The Practice of Parking Requirements , Nationwide Transportation Surveys , The Language of Parking , The Calculus of Driving, Parking, and Walking , The Price of Land and the Cost of Parking , People, Parking, and Cities , Converting Traffic Congestion into Cash , The Vehicles of Nations , Afterword Twenty-First Century Parking Reforms