I live in a country where very little parking is required and whatever parking is built is either free-for-all or come at a huge price. People cheap out, but still expect to drive.
The end result is parking in grey-legal spots, parking in too narrow streets making it dangerous, parking in ex-greenery-now-sandy-parking-lot and whatnot. And lots of bad blood between neighbours who took whose spot :) Yes, there're rules to fine such behaviour. But it'd be political suicide to enforce those rules because everybody breaks them.
There was some of that where I lived in Italy, very little in Austria, and it was all much better than having vast, empty parking lots sitting there while house prices climb and climb.
I don't think a parking lot in rural Bend (or any rural American town) is the best example to use. People in Bend are going to rely on cars a lot more than people in downtown Portland and property is likely cheaper + regulated less.
Here's the first lot I found in Portland... nice, waterfront parking!
Average house prices are north of 400K in "rural" Bend (which is actually closing in on 100K people - not big, but not tiny, either).
And of course people use cars a lot to get around here. That doesn't mean the government has to require it: any business that depends on car-dependent people is going to want to provide some parking. There's no reason for the government to get involved in it.
Also: part of the reason people need cars to get around is because we fill land up with useless BS like that, rather than housing or businesses or commercial - empty space stretches everything else out so that more trips require a car.
Government not requiring it encourages freeloading on neighbours. In my post-soviet country, there's a lot of pressure on government to require ample parking. Otherwise both residential and commercial buildings tend to freeride on their neighbours and use their parking.
What is interesting, this evolved despite OK public transit and very little cars in the early 90s.
I don't know how things work in your country, but in the US, Austria and Italy, there are street parking spots that are public. They do not belong to anyone. If it's a problem that they're always full all the time, you can adopt strategies to create some turnover.
This is far superior to the government dictating X parking spots per house (2 in the city I live in), and Y per type of business.
Oh, I'm definitely not advocating for such massive parking lots. Just saying that having little parking lots sucks too. I'm talking about soviet times bloks with parking for 0.2 car/apartment or so.
By the way, over there housing costs climb regardless of little parking required. Apartments in central locations (= walkable/bikable to most offices) cost a shitload of money compared to houses in suburbs. Especially once you step in family-sized market.
The end result is parking in grey-legal spots, parking in too narrow streets making it dangerous, parking in ex-greenery-now-sandy-parking-lot and whatnot. And lots of bad blood between neighbours who took whose spot :) Yes, there're rules to fine such behaviour. But it'd be political suicide to enforce those rules because everybody breaks them.