chopping down all the trees and paving a 12 ft wide strip of black tarmac so cars can even drive there in the first place also massively increases the temperature

there's like three layers of civil engineering between cars and me living too far from the grocery store to walk there. you could make an incrementalist improvement on my neighborhood, and put some public accommodations where the shitty religious school is, or build over the open storm drain and turf grass that's too steep to use for recreational purposes and everybody would still drive to anything outside of a couple square miles or so.

To be fair they don't necessarily need asphalt roads. That's just what used to be the most convenient and relatively cheaper kind of road. There are other options these days that are better both for the vehicles and for the environment - but even if those better options were used, your point still stands in general.