On the contrary, I think the prosperity evident in rural areas that can afford high ratios of car ownership is itself a small, self-selecting group of very well-off countries. If you broaden your view to the rest of the world, peak car doesn't look so silly after all.

A car is a much bigger investment in the developing world than it is in developed nations. Technology will enable more and more people in these nations to get more and more of their life done without the need to own an automobile.

We may see a saturation profile in the small part of the world where cars are both small investments and big conveniences, and a peak profile everywhere else. Which is, on the whole, a peak profile.

I think one area over looked in their study of people streaming into and out of cities is the less need for the city itself to provide for the needs of the people. Combine that with all the congestion style pricing and it drives development outside of the city where those who cannot afford the entry costs.

I think there's also the issue of differing definitions of "convenience." I used to live in a city where I walked or used public transit to get everywhere. Now I live in a suburb and drive everywhere, and I find most of the things I like to do MORE convenient. Yeah, in the city it was easy to walk to bars and restaurants, but I don't eat out that much, and I'm beyond the age where I want to hang out in bars.

As just one example, I like to cook at home, and grocery shopping when I have to carry everything in my arms is a pain in the butt. I know people like to talk about how much fresher your food is when you buy just what you need every day, and that sounds great, but I have a lot of other things going on in my life. Having to plan time to go to the grocery store every day after work is a hassle. Being able to drive five minutes to the store, park easily, and carry my stuff home in my trunk, is vastly more convenient than what I did when I lived in the city.

Having lived both ways for several years, I will never willingly go back to living in a densely populated city.

My car is essentially a portable home I get to take with me wherever I am: it has first aid equipment, it has water and snacks, and secure storage. If you are optimizing for convenience, the correct choice is to separate things by networks of roads and use cars: that's why they exploded in popularity. You do want to live near where you work, but most of the people commuting long enough distances to make that matter are doing that due to economic issues (cost of living), not due to fundamental requirements for car deployment.

The issue is just that it isn't sustainable: it uses too much energy at too high an externality cost for us all to have this amazing level of convenience. It requires too much land to be paved and too much oil to be burned. But people should not confuse sustainability with convenience: dense urban areas that are not conducive to cars are not "convenient". To the extent to which people who live in them think they are convenient, it is because they don't understand most of the downsides they know about to cars are caused by dense urban environments.

I'm carless here in the city, and my very heavy groceries from two different stores are about to be delivered by Instacart. I'm lounging around in my PJ's. If this isn't convenient I don't know what is.

But like you said, different people have different definitions of "convenience".

I'm not so sure about infrastructure improvements, at least here in Germany. I have been cycling for more than 20 years, and the infrastructure has not changed that much. Some places have improved a bit (especially in the last 5 years), but some are worse too. I feel that the experience is largely the same here. It may be different in places like Paris or London, though.

I'm not sure how much change is happing on the continent, but based on some stories I've seen, there are many cities pushing the envelope, I think even within Germany (probably depends on the city?).

Urbanization is steadily increasing worldwide.

> and are relatively well-off.

If you live in a city, owning a car is more expensive than not.