Donald Shoup, a professor of urban studies whose provocative and occasionally amusing 734-page treatise on the economics of parking sparked reforms in thousands of cities, helping reduce traffic, create green space and make cities more walkable, died Feb. 6 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.

The cause was a stroke, said his wife, Pat Shoup.

Shoup was an intellectual hero to urbanists. His disciples called themselves the Shoupistas — their Facebook group has more than 8,100 followers — and referred to their bearded guru as Shoup Dogg, after rapper Snoop Dogg.

Shoup, who bicycled to his office at UCLA in khaki pants and a tweed sport coat, did not rap. But he managed to take a dry subject — parking — and turn it into an entertaining one.

“Many of us,” he liked to remind conference audiences, “were probably even conceived in a parked car.”

In his 2005 book, “The High Cost of Free Parking,” a hefty tome that legions of urban studies students have lugged around to the detriment of their spinal cords, Shoup explained the problems that city planners created by providing too much free or underpriced parking after automobile use soared in the early 20th century.

He liked to quote George Costanza, the bald, neurotic “Seinfeld” character: “My father didn’t pay for parking, my mother, my brother, nobody. It’s like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay when, if I apply myself, maybe I can get it for free?”

To Shoup, that quote showed the economic calculus that drivers perform: Instead of paying for a pricey garage, they are tempted to keep looking and waiting for an elusive (and cheaper) spot to become magically available — wasting energy and creating traffic and air pollution.

“The curb spaces are like fish in the ocean: a parking space belongs to anyone who occupies it, but if you leave it, you lose it,” Shoup wrote. “Where all the curb spaces are occupied, turnover leads to a few vacancies over time, but drivers must cruise to find a space vacated by a departing motorist.”

As cities grew, free or inexpensive parking was regarded as an inalienable right. City planners mandated that developers provide off-street parking for residential and commercial projects, incentivizing driving over other forms of transportation. It was a waste of valuable land, Shoup noted, that contributed to urban sprawl.

He proposed a three-pronged solution: Ban off-street parking requirements, letting developers (and market forces) dictate how much parking to supply; employ dynamic pricing for on-street parking, raising prices when demand is highest; and spend the resulting increased revenue from meters to spruce up sidewalks, encouraging more walking.

“The High Cost of Free Parking” was widely praised, especially for turning parking into a riveting read.

“When I told a group of transportation colleagues about the book, they expressed both disbelief and sympathy — how could there be that much to say about parking, let alone anything interesting?” Susan Handy, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis, wrote in The Journal of Planning Education and Research. “But as Shoup adeptly shows, parking is interesting, and it is hugely important.”

The book captured the attention of progressive policymakers and grassroots activists, who began pushing for cities big and small to adopt Shoup’s ideas.

“Don is treated in some places like Einstein, like he has discovered the theory of relativity,” Bonnie Nelson, a founder of Nelson\Nygaard, a transportation consulting firm, said in a 2010 article in the Los Angeles Times.

More than 3,000 cities have adopted some or all of Shoup’s recommendations, according to the Parking Reform Network, a nonprofit that champions his book’s ideas.

“The size and breadth of this book gives it authority,” said Tony Jordan, the group’s founder. “You can literally stand on it when you make an argument.”