Taxes would seem to result from many factors besides sprawl, and there are less spread out cities with higher taxes. There are studies showing shorter commute times in metro areas with more dispersed development than in those that are more compact. Pricing meat at its true cost could free up huge amounts of land and water while cutting air and water and pesticide pollution, improving health, and permitting extensive reforestation. There is definitely a need to protect sensitive habitats, and systems are in place and operating for much of this now. It's wrong to blame current practice for mistakes of past.
Numerous programs exist that mitigate sprawl.
The world out there has come to believe that sprawl is stucco, is red tile roofs, is anything built on green fields since WWII, despite the fact that most of those denigrating sprawl are, by this definition, inhabitants of sprawl. We can build on the positives and correct the negatives of new suburbanization and come out much better than we would if we put our energy and resources into attempting to reverse this momentum. Indeed, this longing may not be unique to Americans.