In rural areas, you don't really have a choice, but many cities in the US are just ugly urban sprawl. As time goes on, parts of the cities decay and rather than fixing what is already there, the cities just continue to expand out. Hardly sustainable.

This discussion is one consideration about innovation that is hardly ever discussed. Once something (in our case, the humble car) becomes mainstream, it is no longer a convenience. It, rather, becomes a necessity once adoption becomes widespread enough.