[kungato]

Many people don't own a car because they can't afford it or are too old to drive it. Owning a (registered) car costs with gas yearly about 1 net monthly salary. Croatia is small but even so very sparsely populated. 1/4 of population is in the capital metro area

[tasuki]

> very sparsely populated

That's very relative. With 72 ppl/km^2, I wouldn't call Croatia "sparsely populated".

[jon-wood]

Looking at nationwide statistics can be misleading, often you'll find that while on average you get a figure like that, almost all of it is centred on a few large cities with anything outside those cities consisting of scattered small villages a few hundred people living in them.

[arethuza]

Looking at land use in places like can be surprising - e.g. a great er percentage of the UK land area is peat bogs than is built on:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...