My point is that it is a lot easier to argue against cars when you make a good living and can afford the nicer parts of the city. When your choice is a crappy car commute or a nightmare commute via trains and public transit, and the places in your budget for you to live in don't have "cute restaurants" or "well groomed parks", things are not so cut and dry. Cars improve quality of life for many people and it's downright myopic and classist to say they ruin lives and cities.

You're confusing cause and effect. The effect of having cars everywhere is that we end up with cities where the downtown core is hyper dense and the extents are flat. What we want is the opposite. Six storey mid rises. And commutes via trains and mass transit are only nightmares when they're all trying to get to the same place and they're 3rd class citizens to cars and trucks.