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.