It's much worse than "designed for cars." It's more like "not survivable without a car." It's the same with apps on my phone. I don't want to use them, but sometimes there simply is no alternative in today's world.

We may end up building a world where AI is similarly necessary. The AI companies would certainly like that. But at the moment we still have a choice. The more people exercise their agency now the more likely we are to retain that agency in the future.

I lived in Prague, whose center is medieval and the neighbourhoods around it pre-1900, and even though what you say is true (fewer people drove everywhere), the streets were still saturated to their capacity.

It seemed to me that regardless of the city, many people will drive until the point where traffic jams and parking become a nightmare, and only then consider the alternatives. This point of pain is much lower in old European cities that weren't built as car-centric and much higher in the US, but the pattern seems to repeat itself.

Helsinki made a major push to reduce cars to get to Vision Zero and succeeded in no car fatalities in 2024. It’s now hard to get a taxi and you’re expected to walk / other transport it’s a little bit annoying but worth it

The comment explicitly mentioned "cities". Of course rural and suburban areas don't make it practical to be without a car, but many people in cities could use public transportation but handwave it as beneath them or dangerous or unreliable. When in reality it works just fine. Car travel has its own tradeoffs that can be just as easily exaggerated.