Alumnus Tony Jordan (Rachel Carson ’99, politics) became a leading advocate for parking reform because of a book. The High Cost of Free Parking, by Donald Shoup, outlines the history of American parking minimums—anachronistic laws that require a certain number of parking spaces to be built alongside different types of construction. For a bowling alley, municipal parking minimums might demand three or four spaces per bowling lane, or one per pew at a funeral home.
When Jordan read the book in 2010, he regarded parking lots as many people do: just a part of the landscape. Learning how free parking had helped create sprawling, disconnected cities with inadequate transit infrastructure.
“I felt like I was eating a hamburger and reading The Jungle,” Jordan said, referring to Upton Sinclair’s gruesome exposé of the American meatpacking industry.
Shortly after, Jordan began organizing fellow residents of Portland, Oregon, to oppose antiquated parking rules. They won a significant victory in 2016 when the city dropped plans to introduce parking minimums to one of its most densely populated and walkable neighborhoods. But Portland was just the beginning — in 2019, Jordan started the Parking Reform Network, or PRN, as a way to connect experts and organizers around the country fighting against bad parking policy.
Over the past few years, PRN has lent expertise, funding, and organizing power to successful parking reform campaigns in a number of cities, including Duluth, Minnesota, and Austin, Texas, which repealed their parking minimums last year. Ten Oregon cities also passed parking reforms in 2023. Thousands of American cities still have parking minimums on the books, though, and Jordan said it’s his mission over the coming years to help overturn them.
In recognition of this work, Jordan earned a spot on the list of 2024 Grist 50 honorees. Grist Magazine is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization focused on climate and the environment.
