Seaside Institute

The Spring issue of Coastal Living Magazine features an aticle by Tracey Minkin about the influence of SEASIDE? Florida, the think tank of the Seaside Institute and the 20th anniversary and growth of beautiful Alys Beach. The evolution of New Urbanism began with 80 acres and an idea that influenced a movement. Pick up your copy on newsstands now.

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Thank you, Aaron Clifton! We are glad you are here.

The Wall Street Journal | The UCLA economist Donald Shoup spent his career studying parking, a dreary-seeming subject that nobody had previously thought to study carefully, and nobody else seemed to want to study at all. https://lnkd.in/gGBdUJwc In 2005, Shoup published his 700-plus page opus, ‘The High Cost of Free Parking,’ based on four decades of research. There are, by some estimates, two billion parking spots in America—about seven for every car, a total area equivalent to West Virginia. And the vast majority of car trips in the U.S.—Shoup claimed 99% of them—result in parking free in one of those spots, an economically incomprehensible situation, in terms of basic supply and demand. It was a subsidy whose total value Shoup estimated as between 1% and 4% of the nation’s total GNP—‘in the range of what we spend for Medicare or national defense…’ Shoup took special aim at the harms of ‘off-street minimum parking requirement’ regulations, whereby municipalities compel developers to include a precise, minimum number of spots dictated by their building’s specific use. Planners lay out these requirements in exhaustive and meticulous tables, but Shoup discovered they were merely ‘pseudoscience’ without any rational or solid empirical basis. In a 1999 paper, ‘The Trouble with Minimum Parking Requirements,’ Shoup scoffed at the notion that ‘[w]ithout training or research, urban planners know exactly how many parking spaces to require for bingo parlors, junkyards, pet cemeteries, rifle ranges, slaughterhouses, and every other land use.’ In fact, those he surveyed confessed they often just copied the requirements of surrounding communities…

Sprawl Repair Marina Khoury of DPZ CoDESIGN shares how sprawl can be repaired by suburban retrofit and new urbanism principles. She is currently working with Walton County, Florida on the comprehensive plan. Visit PlanForWalton2040.com. Our 2025 Seaside Prize recipients, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson have focused their work on Suburban Retrofit. During Seaside Prize weekend, they invited and challenged us to think about areas where sprawl repair could be considered. #SeasideInstitute #WaltonCounty

Celebrating Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, the 2025 SEASIDE Prize? recipients! We are invited by SEASIDE Prize? recipients, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson to help repair sprawl and to consider suburban retrofit to repair fractured communities. Video: M.Little Productions

Town Founder of Seabrook, Washington, Casey Roloff shares the importance of Suburban Retrofitting in our communities as a tool to repair sprawl. Seabrook is a development on the Washington coast rooted in the principles of new urbanism. Casey was directly inspired by SEASIDE? Florida, found educational resources through the Seaside Institute, and was mentored by the Davis family when he was envisioning Seabrook. He currently serves on the Seaside Institute Board of Governors During our Seaside Prize weekend, June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones challenged and invited us to think beyond single use development and consider the solution through suburban retrofit, traditional town planning, and new urbanism. Video: M.Little Productions #SeasideInstitute #SeasidePrize #SeasideFL #SeabrookWa

Celebrating our 2025 Seaside Prize recipients and Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson as they invite us to join the movement to repair sprawl by retrofitting suburbia. Welcome to the Seaside Institute Board of Fellows. Video: M.Little Productions #SeasideInstitute #SeasidePrize

Remembering Donald Shoup A Conversation with UCLA Professor & Author of The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup and Henry Grabar, Staff Writer for Slate and author of Paved Paradise. All Seaside Institute podcasts are recorded at SOWAL House.

Did you miss the Livestream of the Seaside Prize Awards Ceremony? It is now avaiable on our archives to watch!