http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm
Land is cheap in rural areas, so parking would not be very pricey there.
Lastly, the edit to your post is nothing more than the implied claim "is == ought". You never actually give a reason why people living in rural areas deserve to be subsidized at the expense of city people. We may have historically forced city folk to subsidize rural folk, but that is not a reason to continue doing so.
Pricey is a relative term.
Subsidized? I would think that cheap or free parking would be the cost of doing business in a city. That was my argument, not that it has been going on for a long time. Yes, it has been going on for a long time, and for a good reason. Folks need a place to park, even in their solar-powered hovercraft.
You are asking if cities can be re-engineered by fiat -- let's pick parking and make it more expensive, thereby driving cars out of the urban area. The internet is full of folks saying a lot more than they know -- hell I am one of them. But even by this standard that position is pretty far out there.
But why argue? I think cities should try all of these things. I will refrain from living or working there. I suspect many others will do the same. Perhaps I am wrong. Don't know. It appears on the surface that this "tax commuters" "tax parking" and "tax tourist" idea is counter-productive to the entire idea of a city. There's only so much of it you can get away with.
But that's just me.
Paying for cheap/free parking for other people currently is part of the cost of doing business in the city due to regulations which demand it. The question is, why should it be the cost of doing business in the city?
Also, I'm not proposing any re-engineering. If the current level of parking is optimal, then it would persist persist (but with people paying for their own parking). I don't claim to know the optimal level of parking, I just want to adopt a system with incentives to get the level right.
Incidentally, Manhattan comes pretty close to having market-priced parking. There is some free parking, particularly at low-demand times, but a big chunk of people pay market rates for parking. There seem to be plenty of people who want to live/work there.