It's a gradual process, and part of the problem is actually embedded on your analogy, it's not like perform a heart and artery transplant, because there's no single action that can solve the problem, but years, and years of multiple, small and large initiatives, to make car dependency goes down.
What is your point even? Population? Sprawl?
The examples from those other towns and general strategies employed could easily translate to a smaller town. Alternatively, that smaller town could use towns in the Netherlands as a template for growth rather than say LA
Rotterdam is the polar opposite to Amsterdam in terms of mobility and freedom from car dependency.
Odense has a total area of 30 square miles.
Carson City Nevada has a total area of 150 square miles and has a population of 50k.
Demark has an area of 16k square miles. Nevada has an area of 110k square miles.
So yes. The United States and other large countries do in fact operate off of different rules than small European countries.
Yeah, there are big areas of country Australia and the US where you need a car to get to anything. This is a good reason to have access to a car for some of the population. It's not a reason for the towns themselves to be built with carparks everywhere, no footpaths, massive outlets distributed far apart, bad public transport that doubles as crisis housing for the local homeless population, no pedestrian safety and comfort features like roadside trees, lawns instead of gardens, and everything else that makes up sterile urban sprawl.
We are not talking about perfection being the enemy of the good. The congestion of the daily car commute is as real as anywhere.
Ultimately its a question of finding accelerating solutions (the way). The article I commended on focuses too much on a certain value set (the will).
There are good things being invented. Tiny electric cars for example, that in principle could halve the car density. But remember the paradox that more space will simply lead to more traffic.
Ultimately the entire distribution of work, residential and utility/shopping areas must change. This is not shapped so much by individual preferrences around mobility as it is about real eastate and transport economics, incentives for developers, manufacturers and financiers, interplay with local government tax strategies etc.
Its a wicked problem. Being clear about the challenges can only be good. Blind faith doesnt always carry the day.