Why is it a good idea to give away public space for free? If it's so valuable to people, they should be willing to pay to use it.
They do, it's called taxes. If everyone's tax bill decreases an equal amount, even then not acceptable to have to put up with that nonsense for residents rather than short term visitors to businesses on public roads.
We devote so much space to free parking and making it so the only way you can reasonably get around is by hoping in your personal automobile.
How does free parking reduce getting around using other transportation methods? It doesn't. Again you just want to punish people to try to make them have more burdens in life, either way.
It's not "harassment" to make people pay for the space they are co-opting from the public. That space could always be used for something else: wider side walks, bike lanes, whatever.
No, it can't, if it's available for paid parking. It is truly ridiculous that you want to countermine the demands of the tax paying public that choose to own and use motor vehicles, in favor of the few who would walk and bike. Besides these are usually the low to no income people who aren't paying much in taxes to support the roads in the first place. Certainly not all, but let's face facts, that it is more often impoverished people using walking and bicycles as their primary mode of transportation in "most" areas of the US.
And who says a reasonably designed neighborhood has a "a couple of parking spaces in front of each residence"?
I just did, and does everyone who picks a home in a desirable area, or else as already mentioned, they instead have a driveway at least, if not also a garage.
Maybe I think a reasonable neighborhood has at most 1 on street parking space per building and anyone that wants more should pay to store their private property - like having a driveway or garage, or paying for space from someone else.
Then you can live in that type of slum and suffer. Nobody is stopping you. It still comes back to, that you'd like to make life worse for others who don't have your delusions about the need to downgrade quality of life. I do accept that many americans live in excess, but the ideas you propose, should be about freedom of choice. If someone chooses not to own or park a vehicle in their free parking spot, that is their choice.
More and more, especially as people are getting older, they are actually moving to cities. We can see this because prices for homes in cities are rising much faster than elsewhere.
No, unless you mean retirement communities. Prices for homes in cities are rising simply because of supply and demand, that the population continues to grow but most cities have reasonable limits on further expansion. The suburbs already take up the adjacent land worthy of use. If anything, your argument illustrates one of my points, that it is just a lower quality of life and paying more to have it, to choose an urban area that doesn't even have parking, then be stuck having to walk and bicycle everywhere, or pay even more for taxis/uber, or get mugged waiting for busses, or on them, or subways. What a lovely life. Not. Older people do not want that lifestyle, quite the opposite, they are degrading in health and not wanting to walk and bicycle to meet basic needs.
Prices tell us that people want to be able to live in amenity rich areas, which often means sacrificing room for personal vehicles.
Completely backwards. The more expensive homes in the more expensive areas, have not just parking, but 2+ car garages. Paying a premium for some little urban unit tends to be what single people do, or at least those who are childless, as these space constrained homes tend to not even have much of a backyard to play in, and enjoy the outdoors in general without having to (I guess walk or ride a bike, lol?) travel just to see more than a token gesture of trees and grass.
And as people get older and potentially develop disabilities, those people are still able to get around instead of becoming trapped in their suburban wasteland, unable to get out of their non-ADA home or drive.
If someone doesn't have the mental or physical capabilities to drive, then you think it is wise for them to be roaming urban streets? Ridiculous. Suburbia is wonderful, where most seniors prefer to be, until forced aka feel it is best, to go into a nursing home, yet more and more seniors prefer to just ride it out and die in their nice, suburban home. They most definitely do not want the noise and chaos of urban life in "most" urban areas.
And more wealthy in urban areas may have vehicles, but in those denser areas, where parking is limited, they pay for the privilege. In NYC, a place people clearly want to live if you use price as a corollary to demand, 45% of all city households have a car, with only 22% owning a vehicle in Manhattan. And that doesn't even get into people that maybe don't want Manhattan density, but want to live car-light. Plenty of Boston metro cities and suburbs where people can reasonably get by with 0-1 cars per household. They could afford more, but they don't want to literally burn thousands of dollars a year on an unnecessary vehicle.
You are talking about making sacrifices, trading a degradation in one area of life, for something else, which is a personal choice, but you'd like to force your choices on others. How about those who make different choices, if they likewise forced their choices on you? Do you see how this works? It's called freedom.
This whole conversation is like a Yogi Berra-ism: "no one goes there; there's too much traffic".
It's more like you want the US to turn into Chinese slums. You are welcome to live any way you want, as long as you accept that others have the same option.