100%. Footpaths should be reserved for people. Parking (as someone pointed out), utility poles, charging points, even bike parking, etc should be put there only as an absolute last resort. Unfortunately this is almost never the case.

Others are thinking about high tech solution to this, but as a start whenever there is on street parking just reserve 10cm between some of them and put all the utilities there.

We could also do with much less signage, outside of the ones for the speed limits (we would need a lot less of them with a 30km/h speed limit in cities… but I digress), road type (one way) and hazards I struggle to think of any others that is useful.