Another way to look at it, is it increases demand for land in the burbs, where there's free parking.
There's no obvious inherent benefit to shopping downtown where I work or in the burbs where I live. Theoretically centralization would benefit everyone. However no one shops downtown if they can avoid it, the parking situation is horrendous and high rents mean higher prices. So all my retail shopping is done in the burbs. Which means higher land demand in the burbs (both for the stores, and the free parking).
There are ancillary cultural effects. If you partition an area into "you only go there because you have to go there because there's no free parking and no retail" vs "you go there because you want to, and there's free parking" the coincidence sets up inappropriate beliefs, like free parking is a universal good or paying to park is a universal bad. Reality is its more like a circus ride where if your land prices exceed $X/sq foot then both free parking and retail are inherently economically inappropriate in those areas, if at all avoidable. Stick a super expensive office building on that land instead, etc. Shoppers and their freely parked cars don't belong in areas that cost $2000/sq foot, especially if $20/sq ft is a ten minute drive out of the city.