Reality is that in places with less room for cars and street design and/or regulations disincentivizing driving, fewer people own cars than in places that have widened roads for car traffic and turned 1/3 of land area into surface parking. Your idea that car ownership is god-given and without space, people will get them either way and stack them on top of each other is delusional. How can San Antonio have a more than 10 times higher car owner rate than Hong Kong? They both have roughly the same GDP per capita. Did Hongkongers just not get the memo? Are they stupid?! Sure, they'd have nowhere to park and the whole island would constantly be gridlocked if they had the 90% car owner rate of San Antonio but none of that matters and they should get a car either way, as nature intended.