This is pretty obvious at least for some cases. Of course it depends a lot on the structure of the street / city. I haven't been much in the US, but I can imagi

This is pretty obvious at least for some cases. Of course it depends a lot on the structure of the street / city. I haven't been much in the US, but I can imagine it's not affected by some issues as much as other places. It comes down to space, and how you use it. I spent a couple months living in a busy street of a European city. The amount of parking space took easily 2-3x that of the sidewalk which was only maybe 2 meters wide. It was a busy street for pedestrians also and it was pure hell even walking there, but especially just stopping to see a shop window. You would automatically become an obstacle for all the other pedestrians, so almost nobody would ever do it. You can imagine that this is terrible for business - cutting down on the parking space would give space to pedestrians and they would have an easier time checking out shops and spending money there.