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>the city instead requires businesses to maintain off-street parking, and they pass that cost on to everyone

I'm not sure how generally true that is where I live relatively nearby (Boston/Cambridge). There are some businesses that have generally fairly crowded/small parking lots. (And places like hospitals certainly do though you generally have to pay for them.) But in general you have to pay for metered parking or find a garage.

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Much of this depends on the particular city's rules and when development happened. Off-street parking requirements have become far more common since the 1950s. Places that developed prior to this (and didn't dramatically re-develop) may not have this as much, since the rules would only apply to new development. I think a fair bit of the US northeast may fall under that category.

And, for instance, San Francisco has no required off-street parking, and has limits to off-street parking instead: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s...

However, plenty of other places in the US are different. The rest of the Bay Area is quite sprawled, as are the areas of the Midwest I've spent time in.

In San Fransisco, it's too "costly" to park on the street because your car will be broken into, with full support of the people of SF and law enforcement.

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