The core of European cities were built around foot and horse travel, and then that template fit for expansion outward, even after the influence of the car.

Take Mainz, Germany; where my father is from; the core of the city is a walkable old city (which my Opa knew every corner of having worked for the city for decades, and he toured me around all over it when I visited...). But then around it are a whole bunch of villages which grew into suburbs, and are connected by freeway. But it seems to me that because each of those villages, towns, and the central city already had a tradition of walkability, the connectivity between the towns, villages, suburbs took that into account when the post-WWII reconstruction happened.

In Mainz I was able to take a streetcar out from the centre of town to a small village in under 45 minutes and go walk in a forest. Here in southern Ontario -- where we have similar density and population to the Frankfurt/Rhine corridor -- such a thing requires a car.