It's not about car-free life. It's about dense cities being terrible places to live unless you're at a level of wealth high enough to isolate yourself from the poverty, crime, noise, etc in a secure luxury apartment in an upmarket area.
IMHO, big cities are dying, they're a relic of the past. The Internet had already killed physical retail. The pandemic killed off more businesses while WFH workers fled the cities. Soft-on-crime policy trends seem to be hastening the decline.
And in a digitally connected world there's simply fewer reasons to physically pack ever more people into small spaces.
It is really not a big deal.