That's not as incompatible as it may seem: only a fraction of area of those cities are ultra-compact medieval mazes (and you can usually recognize it because it's named "The Old {Town/District/Port/Giraffe/Whatever}"); for living and relaxing, most of the population doesn't live in the ancient part of a city. For example, this is one of the non-touristy neighborhoods: spacious yet walkable (plus public transport if you're not feeling walky), a few minutes from the Old Town. Finding a parking spot could be tricky, though. https://www.google.cz/maps/@50.0753781,14.450439,3a,75y,53.5... Note that this neighborhood is also an "old city" by most definitions (founded in the 1890s).

Me too. When I moved from San Francisco to Atlanta I traded a public transit commute for a car commute. I still spend the same amount of time getting to and from work but I don't have to spend it physically crammed in with other human beings.

To me that reads as "I no longer can use that time to read or do something productive". Each to their own, though. Though it depends on the conditions of the public transportation - being crammed in a bus is very different from having a seat on a train or ferry, as I usually do.

When I had a public transit commute, I rarely read, even though I read a lot in general. Even if I had a seat concentrating on anything was too difficult. I listened to a lot of podcasts, which I still do in my driving commute, and those had the side benefit of drowning out the noise of humanity.

My favorite commutes have been walking commutes, but I haven't had a job where I could do that in years, and I bought a house which isn't within walking distance of any jobs I'd want so that won't happen for the foreseeable future. Unless the walk from my bedroom to my home office counts as a "commute".

For me, crammed into a bus/train isn't that bad, provided that A/C is run at full blast and the direction of airflow is top->down. This means that winter commutes by public transit in the northeast is absolutely miserable, since they never ever turn on the A/C to dehumidify the space, even if humidity is close to 100%.