That is unrealistic and has very bad consequences on the neighborhood. I've heard urban planners (in lectures) say that when there is not a row of parked cars between a street and the sidewalk, people are much less likely to walk and spend time there. So, for example, businesses close along a street when parking is suddenly prohibited. And, as others pointed out, in most cities it is unrealistic due to how little parking there is available.
If America had a real public transport/rail system in all its major cities, this would be way less of an issue. It did at one point. America had an amazing tram network in many cities. Every city I lived in use to have trams.
Instead of upgrading trams like St. Petersburg, Melbourne and most of Europe did, America scraped trams due to lobbying efforts of car companies to switch to shitty buses.
The Netherlands have amazing train and tram networks throughout their cities. It's not uncommon to see bicycles piled up and belted to the wall in the bike section of each train.
This makes sense if the road is wide and fast, like in suburban cores: the point is to separate pedestrians from noisy, dangerous cars going upwards of 30 mph.
This makes no sense for local city traffic.
> in most cities it is unrealistic due to how little parking there is available
This is a problem with how American cities are designed. Ideally, one shouldn't need to own a car at all in a major city. In Manhattan, for example, it's ridiculous that the government (and therefore residents) subsidize cars by providing free street parking all over the island. Very, very few people who live there own a car. But I digress.
> I've heard urban planners (in lectures) say that when there is not a row of parked cars between a street and the sidewalk, people are much less likely to walk and spend time there.
Have they considered replacing the parking lane with a bike lane instead of regular traffic?
> And, as others pointed out, in most cities it is unrealistic due to how little parking there is available.
That's purely a supply and demand issue--because of how cheap street parking is, the price of parking is very low and thus elevated parking garages are uneconomical. If only elevated parking is available, that changes.
