I grew up in manhattan, and I really just think this is a situation of people wanting something different than what they previously had. The ability to drive instead of being jam packed on highly congested trains was something that I enjoyed when living in other cities, traffic does suck, but at least you're in a temperature controlled place where you can control the radio and what not. Additionally, point to point transportation is nice as well.

Over time, what I've come to appreciate the most is the middle ground, something that is incredibly rare but does exist within pockets of larger cities and that's the ability to easily choose between walking, taking public transit, biking or driving to really any destination. All of the big cities in the pacific northwest (portland, seattle, vancouver) do this well, in addition to areas outside of the city centers in the north east as well as some of the first ring suburbs.