That's mostly an American/European thing though, world wide there are only about 1.5 billion cars, 275 million of these in the United States, another 250 million in Europe. Together those account for ~ 1/3 of the cars but only for about 12% of the world population.
For sure, and some economies were "lucky" enough to wait until the late 20th century to develop. The public transit systems in Singapore, Hong Kong, the entire Pearl River Delta, etc are all IMO far better ways to get around than driving a car in most US cities.
Lucky might be subjective. Standard of living in the suburbs of American might be deemed superior to living in an efficiency apartment in Hong Kong, but that's much less an option for people who live in areas that developed later on, as these areas leaned into true urban levels of density since it's infrastructurally far cheaper per capita. Given the choice, many would prefer to not live in New York levels of density.
For sure, and I want people to have that choice! But I also want the amount paid by people living in the suburbs to more accurately reflect the cost, and I want people who prefer living in denser urban environments to be able to improve their surroundings by removing cars.
That's mostly an American/European thing though, world wide there are only about 1.5 billion cars, 275 million of these in the United States, another 250 million in Europe. Together those account for ~ 1/3 of the cars but only for about 12% of the world population.