You must understand how the modern US auto culture developed. Prior to about 1920 the Automobile was a toy for the upper middle class. It replaced the bicycle in that regard. People saw them, knew what they were but less then 10% of the population actually owned or rode in one.
Now, Taxis were one of the first to adopt the automobile. In the US Taxi regulation came about do to the invention of the Automobile and the lack of parking spaces. Upper middle class men would have their teenage and 10 something sons drive them to and from work. In the mean time the teens and 20 something would use the car to pick up people for pay on streetcar lines, asking that the fare be paid to them instead. People would take up this offer and the sons would earn a lot of money during the day. They had to pay for the Gasoline they used, but since the car was already paid for by their father no capital expenditures (and every day service was NOT expected, thus they could skip anytime they wanted go elsewhere and their passengers would just take the streetcar).
To end the above practice the Streetcar companies had the states adopt Taxi regulations. At the same time, fathers were finding out what they sons were doing and started to find parking spaces for their car (remember we are talking of people making the equivalent of $125,000 a year today) and realized this was leading to potential claims against them for leaving their sons operate their cars. Thus this practice died by WWI, but popular in the 1900s and early 1910s.
Now the 1920 census was the first census where more people where found to be living in Urban areas then Rural Areas (Urban Areas included not only small cities but any town of more then 2000 people, these small urban areas are now referred to as "Urban Clusters" by the US Census bureau). At the same time, the main competitor to US Farm Goods, Russia and the Ukraine, were under Communist Rules and Europe was boycotting them. This brought the price of US farm products to the highest ever. Rural American was booming 1920-1927. This became a hot bed for buying automobiles, so farmers could more easily go to and from the Urban Clusters that tended to be their Count Seats.
The other group buying automobiles in the 1920s were upper middle class urban dwellers. The 90% of the urban population did NOT own an automobile in the 1920s, 1930s and during WWII.
Thus in the 1920s and continuing into the 1930s, the two largest group of new car buyers were Rural Farmers and the Upper Middle Class (the top 10% of the population).
Now, how about the majority of people, including most people living on the farm in the 1920s and 1930s? They walked to and from work, school and to go shopping. Streetcars were used only for special trips or for use by Upper Middle Class people who had not yet bought a car. This was one of the problem of that time period, people WALKED and things they needed on a day to day basis was within easy walking distance (even in most of Rural America, very small stores were the norm).
Now, in the 1920s the larger stores decided to cater to those people with the highest income, yes the upper middle class. Thus you started to see stores catering to people who had automobiles as opposed to walk in traffic. The First Auto Suburbs occur in the 1920s and 1930s, replacing the older Streetcar Suburbs (Most of these suburbs actually were both and neither. Most of these early auto suburbs were a good walk from a streetcar or bus stop, but in a pinch that option still existed, but they had garages to store their automobile (If it was in the shop, they could still walk to the Streetcar line, or their spouse could drop them off while the spouse had the car for the day).
One of the characteristics of the 1920s and 1930s was when new stores opened they tended to be at the end of a streetcar line. The reason for this was simple, you could build a store geared for automobile users shoppers while manning the store with clerks that had to use a streetcar or bus to get to the store.
It is only in the 1960s that stores like Kmart and Walmart opened up (Both started in 1962, but had older inner cities stores for decades before that date, stores geared for foot traffic NOT automobile traffic). This marked the switch to not only buyers in such stores using automobiles to get to the store, but also the clerks working in those stores.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmart#Early_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_mall#Neighborhood_center
One of the switches that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s was the abandonment of many of the malls located at the end of streetcar or bus lines and replacement by malls further out in the suburbs, designed based on the concept of both buyers and workers would drive to the mall. This is the start of the modern shopping mall in the US. Many have bus lines to them, but these were after thoughts unlike the early malls of the 1920s and 1930s where location of public transit was a key to picking the location.
I bring this up for the switch from a society where most people WALKED to school, to shop and to work has been gradual. I grew up in Pittsburgh and you not only saw the above, you also saw the steel workers getting paid good money and buying a car the then moving to the suburbs. Notice the car was purchased first and once it came to be seen as the way for the father of the family to get to work, the move to the suburbs came next. In the suburbs you see Students being bussed to school (Something that started in Rural America in the 1920s but is now entrenched in suburbia).
Thus using automobiles, trucks and buses are innate to out society today. My Father, who was a letter carrier in a suburban community always joked about the people who moved from the inner city to the suburbs, it was NOT to get the color Green of Grass but to get away from the color Black. We "Solved" a lot of racial tensions by whites moving out of the inner city. We also solved the problem of what to do the the poor, we abandoned them to the inner city. We also "Solved" the problem of the people with mental problems, we abandoned them to the inner city also. Yes, a lot of problems the US faced since WWII was "Solved" by people moving to the suburbs and leaving people with problems behind.
Given the above, people want to stay in the suburbs OR want an idealized urban center without all of the problem left behind by their parents and grandparents. Given the nature of most urban areas, the oldest housing in urban areas are entering the end of their expected life and need to be either torn down OR rebuilt. Thus such housing is dirt cheap, having little or no rental value. These homes are so poor the poor are being forbidden to live in them, thus the bottom 10% of the populations are moving out to the old streetcar suburbs. This is opening up urban cores for the upper middle class, who for various reasons want to live lose to the urban core but do NOT want to have any of the urban problems their parents and grandparents left behind.
Thus you have two trends, the older parts of the inner city is being high end housing, to high in rent for the poor, and at the same time newer suburbs ever further away from the urban core are also booming. The older streetcar suburbs are becoming where the working poor lives, they need a car to get to their low paying jobs in the suburbs, sales clerks and janitors work etc, but need access to public transit for their automobiles tend to be 10 to 15 years old and unreliable. Some are moving into the early auto suburbs, but the lack of adequate public transportation is a big hurtle but there are still enough Streetcar suburbs and Early Auto Suburbs for the working poor to find some place to live that they can afford and still maintain an automobile to get to and from work. If such working class poor managed to get a job in the inner city, they can avoid the cost of an Automobiles, but such jobs tend to be filled quickly.
I go into the above to show the mindset in the US is you need an Automobile, to go to school, work, play and shop. To get out of that mindset means to look into a society where such things are within walking distance. That means smaller stores, schools and work sites, where the economy of scales leads to higher prices then in the big box stores out in the suburbs.
The difference is the ability to use an automobile. As long as it is the main option for people, people will have to deal with its consequences including that Walmart will be able to sell things at a lot lower prices then your neighborhood store. Thus if you have to have an automobile for any reason, then you will use that automobile to get your kids to school, to shop and to go to and from work. If people, as a whole, give up the automobile, then the higher costs of the local stores will cheaper then the cost of an automobile AND the even cheaper prices Walmart can sell at (i.e. Walmart will still be cheaper if you ignore the cost of the Automobile, but if you include the cost of the Automobiles to offset the cheaper costs at Walmart, your local store then becomes competitive).
The above needs re written, it is midnight and I need to go to bed, but you can see what I am trying to get at, we look as how we do things now, for how we will do things in the future for to do things differently is to look at things from a functional point of view today AND in a society without the automobile. The later is hard for us to image for it means thinking how we will shop, play, go to and from school and work without oil. A technical solution that permits things to stay as they are makes the future look like today. That things will have to change because we have to make DRASTIC changes is frightening. That we will have to go to a society where we will have to live with people we dislike (including the mentally challenged) and of people of different income levels (Seeing the poor trying to make do and seeing the rich living high off the hog). At present we do not have to see such mixes except at work, then everyone go back home to be in a society where everyone has the same level of mental stability and income (Race is also a factor, but I am trying to avoid race as much as possible but it still a factor).
In simple terms, if and when we hits the wall and we have to change society to reflect a lower use of energy, we will see changes in society including where we work, where we live, where we shop and where we play. We are hitting that wall at present, but it is only the beginning but the changes will be fought till they become universal.
Going from a Society where where we shop, play, work and go to school was within walking distance to a society where those are done in an automobile lead to some problems (The riots of the 1960s as African Americans revolts at being left behind) and the reversal will be worse for the move to the suburbs was easy, the poor moved into the homes abandoned by the working class. In the reversal the Working Class will have to push out the poor from the areas the poor are in at present and that will lead to clashes, maybe even riots as the poor find themselves being only able to find housing where no public transit exists and thus to far from where they work, shop and go to school.
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