Most people have great pleasure in owning and driving a nice car. The ones that do not are a minority. There are many reasons why cars (and trucks) are desirable and sought after possessions. It would be a logical fallacy that because you currently do not want one, people should build major projects with no regard to car parking.
Too many people though love cars. Some cities are banning cars. Of course buses, trains, delivery vehicles still exist.
Wide open places like US and Canada sure but many places are super crowded. Southern China, Lagos Nigeria, Tokyo, Mexico City. They're all implementing trains for a reason. There is just no way for cars to move if packed into a small area with hundreds of thousands of people.
In case you're being serious, you rent a car or take an Uber. A metropolis might as well be defined by its lack of car ownership.
Even when you're renting or being driven, you go as far as you can via train. (The Metro-North goes to an Appalachian trailhead [1].) It's safer, simpler, cheaper and nobody has the deadweight loss of being unpaid chauffeur.
Hrmm, so you do need a car after all. It's really amusing listening to people from the Bay Area pass down edicts for how everyone else should use transportation, given that their decrees are a complete non-starter in well over 99% of the United States. Calling it "out of touch" would be a bit generous.
> so you do need a car after all. It's really amusing listening to people from the Bay Area
The Bay Area is car centric--most people have a driver's license. I live in Wyoming and lived in New York. You need a car in Wyoming. You don't in Manhattan. High rises make sense in the latter. They'd be stupid here.
If you're dense enough to make high rises necessary, you're too dense for cars to make sense. Parking for high rises is a dead giveaway the project is being pursued for appearances. (San Francisco's skyscrapers are dominated by commercial buildings that double as advertising.)
You didn't ask how to go hiking in the mountains, you asked how to "leave city limits". but you could still bike, go with friends, or rent a car for a day if no buses go where you want. Hiking locations tend to have lots of tourists so there would likely be bus routes, however.
Sure, that's true - though I can see a couple dozen of them out of the window behind my desk, and there'd be lots more if I were on the other side of the building - but I was really just replying to the previous commenter's mockery of the idea that one could go to the mountains via bus. It's not only possible, it's routine!
Bullshit, I'm from the Puget Sound and it hardly covers any of the good trails in the Cascades, nor could it do so practically if service were ever expanded.