They're more like a compromise.

As an outsider, to me the framing that USA is "car-oriented" was always off the mark. Cars are just a tool, which people would rather use as little as possible (I mean, who actually enjoys sitting in traffic or having a long commute?).

The real issue is the notion that everyone needs crazy amounts of space inside and a yard. I've found this calculator[0] that says that for my family I would need 2280 sq ft to "live comfortably", which to me is an absurd amount, as I live on a third of that and was only ever considering apartments with at maximum half the mentioned square footage.

You can't reasonably organise public transport over such a sparsely populated area. Over here we have districts of detached houses and they're notoriously difficult to get in and out of.

[0] https://themortgagereports.com/117403/average-home-size-in-t...