Pre 1990s, there was supply side limit in my country and long waiting time(like years) for cars. This meant that car ownership flourished in the hands of elite only. Post opening up of economy, owning a car has become a status symbol and even villages, where once the ubiquitous sustainable cycle was the way of life, cars now rule.
Cars choke the street like pollution choke my country’s cities. Trains carry hundreds of passengers, buses dozens, autos multiple, but a single vehicle mooching on the street just for sake of a single person. Since parking is a joke, people park their cars anywhere on the side of roads creating more traffic (Yes, it’s a developing country). Folks here love to blame shared autos or government(and some criticism is valid) but none wonder about cars. What is the need for a single person driving an SUV that takes nearly half the space of a small bus?
I see old images of Bangalore from 1960 or Delhi from 1930s and it was wide open spaces/streets. Now it is choked to the limit. Cars have made my country an urban dystopia. There are many things I would have loved my country to copy from the US. It’s obsession with cars is NOT one of them.
For me, cars are an utilitarian waste of space(until they are always running packed to capacity which they rarely do)
Same in The Philippines, Manila is a shithole of traffic, a stupidity copied from the US
As to pollition
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/middle-climate-apocalypse-we-really-care-9890542/
The problem with the soft apocalypse is that it is still an apocalypse. It still ends in collapse. We tell ourselves we have time, that the worst is always just ahead, that we will act when we must
The real shame is that the cities are probably going to restructure to look more like western countries before realising they probably had the right idea the first time around.
