Certainly people get value out of getting to places. If you walk a mile in Paris, there are like 50 places worth going to. If you walk a mile somewhere around the middle ring road surrounding Houston, there's nowhere worth going to. Scale back car use to something reasonable, make the places smaller, move them closer together, and that way we can have nice things again.
I think this is indeed the solution, and European cities figured it out a long time ago.
However, there is a usability problem on the municipal level: if you're starting from scratch, which aspects of the European city do you build first, in what order, so as to build utility slowly without causing planning problems and without spending a bajillion dollars up front?
