[TulliusCicero]

Even 'real cities' in the US have a lot more garbage urban design than most cities in, say, western Europe. Even the denser ones like you frequently have silly car-oriented design, like minimum parking requirements, and huge swathes of the city that are mandated single-family housing only.

Comparing Seattle's transit system to, say, Munich's (where I currently live) is a sick joke. Munich is far more walkable and bikable, too. Of course, a big part of this is that a majority of the land in Seattle is zoned exclusively for, you guessed it, nothing but detached single-family homes.

As an example, I sometimes visit smaller cities (< 50k) here, and even then they still are highly walkable, moderately dense, and they usually have pretty good transit connections to other places.