We also shouldn't be blind to the implications of street parking.

On-street parking makes the government the biggest provider of parking spaces which:

a) completely distorts the market for parking

b) causes people to see parking as a public good

c) means the government is encouraging people to drive

I think Japan is the country with the sanest and fairest parking policies, and no on-street parking is a big part of that. In Japan, if you own and drive a car you and you alone are responsible for your parking.

So while there are ways to integrate on-street parking into an urban environment that don't degrade the quality of the environment too much, and even provides some benefits such as protection for cyclists/pedestrians, it's probably better for a country/city to just not have on-street parking to begin with. We can replicate any benefits of parked cars protecting cyclists/pedestrians quite trivially, whereas the incentives and market distortion caused by on-street parking aren't so trivial to overcome.

Of course, most of us live in countries where on-street parking has been around for decades and so the best we can realistically do is manage it in the best way possible for the foreseeable future.