Yet people continue to walk around in those areas. There's masses of onstreet parking here in Berlin and not that much off street parking, but the footpaths are always crowded.
It's the same in Melbourne - some parts have onstreet parking and lots of people, and some parts of only off street parking and few people.
If getting people to walk between destinations is a goal, you should increase the proportion of on street parking and decrease the proportion of off street parking. This will slow down the cars and increase foot traffic, since it becomes more competitive.
Also, by using the connecting space as parking places, you acknowledge the viability of using connecting places as destinations.
But if your goal is to eliminate car congestion, you aren't doing it right. Planning should optimise for humans and tax revenue, not cars.
um walking why on earth did you jump to the conclusion,
How do busses ambulances etc move through a city that has narrow streets crammed with cars.
Of course with European city's with wide boulevards might not be as bad - though of course those wide streets are designed to stop barricades and to allow for the use of grape shot to stop the rioting presents.
How many European cities have you visited? A few cross-city boulevards don't define the street layout. The average street width in Amsterdam is 9.5m, in Paris is 10.6m, in Brussels is 13.2m, and in Barcelona is 13.9m; compare with Manhattan's 15.9m.
I've heard of towns that attempt to solve this by marking roads residents-permit-parking-only, then only issuing one parking permit per house.
Of course, it's not a perfect solution - you need exceptions for the elderly and infirm who need regular care visits; some sort of guest permit for anyone who hires tradespeople; and people who need a work vehicle have to do without a non-work vehicle, or be forced out.
And it's a whole lot more fair if you set the rule before people buy the homes, rather than imposing it later.
Just charge for parking with the goal of always having one empty parking spot per block. Everything else will work out: those who need to park there now will find a price, those more price sensitive will move elsewhere. If there is high demand someone will open up a parking garage.
All of that assumes good transit though. Without good transit everybody must have a car per adult plus a one spare per family. When you have to pay the expensive of several cars the additional costs of parking starts to hurt. Most people do not see any real alternatives to cars: transit needs to come every 10 minutes all day and get me many different places within half an hour to count as good.
