There's an aspect of "have to", as well, in many larger cities. I mean, I suppose if you were morally opposed to walking maybe you could spend a couple of hours a day in traffic and rent parking somewhere... Many offices, even offices in which very affluent people work, would not necessarily have parking, and if they did it would not be enough for everyone. I work for a big multinational in Dublin, in an office that has about 500 people and I think about 30 or 40 parking spaces. This is the first office I've worked in that had parking at all (mostly a consequence of it being from the 1970s), and Ireland is one of the _more_ car-oriented European countries.
And Dublin isn't exactly a huge city. If you take the likes of London or Paris, most affluent people are going to be commuting by public transport; driving just isn't really practical.
I'd be curious whether NYC, which has some aspects of this, has longer life expectancies than elsewhere in the US.
But longer-term/bigger-picture I think I'd argue it is that way because that's the culture.
If we wanted to drive everywhere we'd see (over time) more suburbs springing up devoid of high streets and new town centres, with parking facilities near to existing centres, or as brownfield developments on the sites of former walkable residences.
You more or less have to. If you're very wealthy I guess you could travel everywhere on a sedan chair or something, but the US thing where you drive to everything can't work in many parts of Europe.
In very high density areas they don't want private motor vehicles so they're just banned, there's maybe public transit but you'd really have to be unhurried to take public transit over a distance that's say a 10 minute walk.
In very low density areas nobody bothered adding a road. Why not just walk? I mean you could use a serious off road vehicle (no the fact your "truck" says it has AWD does not mean it will work) but even in places where that's legal why not just fucking walk?
And Dublin isn't exactly a huge city. If you take the likes of London or Paris, most affluent people are going to be commuting by public transport; driving just isn't really practical.
I'd be curious whether NYC, which has some aspects of this, has longer life expectancies than elsewhere in the US.