1) Cities, whether they're sprawling or dense, or park-laden or not, can be suffocating. It just so happens that yours atm is less park-laden. Thus, your advice for exclusively urban people, is to actually put the effort in to get into real nature; into the mountains, the isolated wilderness, the lakes, etc.. because there's a serenity like that you can't get with facsimiles like neighborhood parks

2) Space between high rises isn't used all that effectively. I think this is particularly a problem with downtown core areas moreso than downtown adjacent areas in a lot of cities.

I'm personally not anti-car outright, just anti-car as a primary means of day to day utility oriented travel and the design of urban spaces that prioritize that over others. If you walk or bike or skateboard most of the time, you develop a feeling for the space you're doing that in, and it has an affect on your life. If you're only walking through parking lots, on broken old slabs of sidewalk that nobody cares about, with no flowers or trees or cats or people around, you're going to want to avoid that. I'm a huge advocate for building your immediate surroundings so they facilitate healthy and sustainable living (the opposite of broken parking lots in a suburbab wasteland) but also for getting the fuck out of the whole city pretty often if you can. I rent a car to do this, and might buy a beater in the future to have more flexibility in that respect, but definitely get the hell out once in a while if you can.

My city is “park laden”. I live next to a 1200 acre park. City parks aren’t nature; however, and having seen the real deal there’s only so much one can do to convince one’s subconscious otherwise.

But yes, I find daily life in an urban environment (however park laden!) to be depleting. Cities are still tons of fun to visit and explore, I’m glad they exist, etc. This might be different if I could reasonably make it to some nature between work and sunset, but in most cities you won’t make it past the burbs.

Hopefully that’s clarifying.

What exactly is it you are advocating for/against? If you want to live in “real” nature, like in a cabin in a forest, or on a ranch in the country, then go do that. Nobody is stopping you.

Edit: Just to put a concrete point on it, it now takes approximately an hour to get out of the suburbs from urban / downtown Dallas. Nature is further away than ever.

Edit 2: Of course you will find people on Twitter or whatever who want to “ban all cars”, but this is not a serious movement or position held by the vast majority of YIMBY/urbanism people. I think most of us would like exactly what you’re talking about: the freedom to let people do what they want on the land they own, and make their own choices as to what living arrangements best for them and their customers. Currently, this option is only denied to people wanting to build up, while suburban sprawl is allowed virtually everywhere. Where I live, Austin, TX, there are parts of our downtown central business district that are zoned for SFH only! It is absurd, we wouldn’t inflict this level of economic destruction on our worst enemies.