Urban sprawl is not a problem, and neither is a little country-side car dependence. The problem with total car dependence arises when you only create "big", pe

Urban sprawl is not a problem, and neither is a little country-side car dependence. The problem with total car dependence arises when you only create "big", pedestrian unfriendly shopping "stroads" that are 6 lanes wide, where even going to the adjacent store is a car trip, and crossing the road takes unreasonably long or is flat out impossible on foot. In these places, driving is your only option even if you can see the store you want to visit from where you live. This is in stark contrast to the highly trafficated European cities, which are car friendly. Take Copenhagen for example. There are of course 6-lane arterial roads going through in various directions, but stores are back-to-back and the destination is rarely ever the arterial road itself. If you're going outside peak hours you might be able to find some street parking down some side street, but otherwise you'll have to locate one of the low-footprint multi-story parking basements/garages and then join the pedestrians from there. In less densely populated cities (say, Lyngby), some shopping areas might have a shared 40-car parking lot associated - not a parking lot for hundreds of cars per store. Should you live out on the countryside and want to go to the city (say, for shopping), you might use a car to get to a central parking area and then join the pedestrians for the actual access - the dense shopping streets are pedestrian-only anyway. People in the outer city are more likely to just use a bicycle or take public transportation, as it's usually faster, cheaper and more convenient - especially for restaurant visits or party, as you might want to drink alcohol. The TL;DR is "car friendly != car dependent". This applies to most European cities I've seen.