Only by traveling to places that were developed before cars took a chokehold on the world can people realize how nice it is to live without them absolutely everywhere.
Many Americans get a taste of that when they vacation to Europe. They often choose to leave their suburb and spend their 2 weeks in urban environments like Barcelona, London, Munich, Paris, Rome, etc., that where built for people and not cars, because it's so pleasant to live like that, and because letting cities develop for people first leads to cities that people actually want to be in, with car-free streets, plazas, promenades, etc. (Yes, today those places are also full of cars. But, unlike American cities, their skeletons are people-first and cars are the invasive element.)
It could be argued that so many problems of American life - weight gain, loneliness, fracturing of the social fabric - stem from how we've isolated ourselves in unwalkable suburbs, where there's no spontaneous social interaction because everyone's always in a car, and where our only exercise is the walk from the parking lot to our desk.
What's depressing is visiting developing countries and seeing them start to ape the worst of American car life. Places like Colombia, which I visit often, are building shopping malls, big-box stores, parking lots, suburbs, and freeways, while after almost 100 years of that type of car-first development in America we're only just starting to realize that actually it might not be that great.
Taking the subway is a pain in the butt. If you try to come home when it's after 11pm, you get to wait 30+ min for a train.
When you want to get the groceries, you have to somehow shuffle all that stuff home, either with a cart or just have your hands suffer in the cold, and then have a four-story walk-up.
Sure, it's charming, but living there takes some real grit. By the way, those places are all expensive comparatively.
Many folks like to read these pieces from an extreme viewpoint, that they want to eliminate all cars everywhere.
A few moments thinking and you realize it would only be practical in downtowns, and alleys would still exist. Visit Wash.DC or London if still unsure. Street maps a cheap substitute.
Old world streets are narrow and sometimes cobblestone. Usually enough.
Compare that with the 50 foot wide boulevards of suburbia, USA. One job I had you couldn’t even cross the street for half a mile because it was built like a freeway.
The alternative is to build denser, sure. But as someone living in Germany and seeing all the Neubau here… is it really so appealing living on 500m2 surrounded by 50 houses like that where neighbours look into your house? Where in the summer you hear everything what other people do? One has 4 children, another one has a dog barking all day, another one likes playing music loud, the odd one does parties every second night, the couple two houses down fights every evening, every weekend there are a couple of bbqs into a late evening, every day some dude mows his lawn so there’s only the Sunday when nobody mows the lawn… there’s nothing appealing in that kind of neighbourhood. You buy a house, you gonna live in it for years, why getting pissed off with your neighbours every second day?
I don’t know, I guess it’s a matter of perspective. The point of view depends on where you sit. I’d choose the suburbs if given an opportunity. Every time I visit the US, I’m jealous of all that space. I don’t even want a big house, no need for 300m2, 160m2 is good enough. I just wish for space around so I don’t have to listen to others all day every day.