[shiroiushi]

Tokyo. There's 38M people in the metro area, and the amount of cars is nothing even remotely like what you see in an American city like Houston.

When you build the city densely and don't give away free parking anywhere, it makes people not bother with driving very much. There's no place to park here, except for a few very expensive private lots that probably aren't close to where you want to go. There's no street parking. Renting a parking space at your apartment is very, very expensive (because they could be using that for something else that makes more profit instead, like more apartments or a convenience or grocery store). And you're not even allowed to own a car here unless you can prove to the police that you have a place to park it: they'll even come with a measuring tape to be sure that particular model of car will fit.

Closer to your home, maybe you should visit Amsterdam, because you've obviously never been there. There's lots of people living there without a car, and the amount of car traffic in the city center is quite low.

[spwa4]

This is true for Belgium as well, that traffic in the city center is essentially nonexistent (after 12h and the trucks delivering goods leave) in the major cities.

But living in these car-free zones is at least double as expensive as outside (and the more central, the easier it is to live car-free, the more expensive it is). It is also totally unrealistic to live there with a family, and if you want a job in center of Brussels and live in Mechelen (for example), you need a car. Train is barely doable and only if your employer is dead center brussels (e.g. Diegem, where "the internet lives", is not realistically reachable)