Sure. They chose a house which at the time had shared on-street parking available, a situation which was not guaranteed to persist forever.

But if they had shown "foresight" and insisted on a suburban house with a drive and a garage, resulting in more yardage of road for the taxpayer to maintain and low density reducing walkability increasing car traffic - has society been improved by their "responsible" decision not to depend on the shared resource?

The person who wanted a single family house with easy parking moves out of the way for other people who don't have those requirements and frees up more space for businesses and apartments who prioritize being in the center as opposed to living in inefficient single housing with a car.

I don't get the argument that its some type of right to have a single family house in an urban center with a place to park your car in front. Thats a luxury.

I lived in a single family house in this sort of scenario for about 15 years in a neighborhood that was experiencing rapid commercial development. (The street one away from mine went from a sparse arterial-through-light commercial zone whose most prominent offerings were a plumbing supply store, a pet hospital and a dental clinic to a bustling thoroughfare of dense resturaunts, shopping, and bars).

When I moved in only 3 houses on my block had driveways and off street parking. It was easy to find parking on the street any time. As the area developed it became as I described above, with mostly residents parked on my street at night and ample turnover during the day for the neighboring businesses.

When the properties behind my house became four story apartments the parking situation began to change on my street and, like you suggest, people started moving out and selling their houses.

But the buyers didn't immediately tear them down and put up 6-story apartments, instead they all got individually replaced or bones-down remodeled into more massive and luxurious single family residences. And they all got driveways.

After that it was impossible to park on my street without a motorcycle or a smart car. All day long people would try to cram in between adjacent driveways where they didn't quite fit and my rich neighbors would come out and leave passive aggressive notes on their windshields.

I was the last house on that street without a driveway, but I worked nights so the spot was pretty much defacto mine. Eventually I sold that house and the next owners scraped it and built a > $1m residence with a driveway. Over ten years later and the situation there remains the same.

It's possible that eventually all those houses will give way to multifamily then high rises, but for the current investment I imagine it will be a while. For how many generations will the parking in that neighborhood be dysfunctional?

Maybe it could've been avoided if developers and planners just ponied up for more underground parking and transit connections, who knows?