I'm Australian and have lived in Germany (Cologne), Zurich, London and (now) New York City so I'll add my perspective. I'll also add that I can't drive (because of an eye condition).

Australia is very much like California. Population density is low. Almost all of Australia is car dependent. Land sizes are large. This makes public transport largely uneconomic and unworkable, with certain exceptions (eg parts of Perth, inner Sydney, Melbourne). Even then, that transport is largely limited to going into and out of the city. If you want to go somewhere else it's a huge problem.

Gas taxes are much higher in Australia (petrol costs $1.40-1.50 per litre last I saw and there are ~4 litres to the gallon). I'm not sure if this covers the cost of roads and infrastructure (for the quarter acre dream) but I highly doubt it, especially once you factor in indirect costs.

London is a mix of inner London where public transport is very good and outer London (Zone 5+) where you are car dependent but you absolutely can get away with using car rental when you need it most of the time. The problem is public transport largely stops at midnight (apart from night buses).

Personally I found the light rail in Cologne (and Bonn) great and never felt the lack of a car.

You absolutely do not need a car in Zurich or pretty much all but rural Switzerland. Intracity and intercity transport is superb. Even getting to ski resorts by train/bus is fine.

Which brings me to NYC. NYC for me has the ultimate public transportation system. It's cheap, goes almost everywhere, runs 24 hours a day (HUGELY important IMHO) and unlike every other example listed above, cabs are actually relatively cheap, although there are oddities to the system (eg the peculiarities of shift change make it somehow impossible to get a cab to the airport in Manhattan at 3pm).

NYC also has an extremely large commuter belt covered by trains and buses such that no one I know drives into the city for work.

I live 7 minutes walk to work, which I love. Actually the idea for me is about 20-30 minutes walk each way because that's just about the right balance between time taken and getting some exercise (IMHO), particularly for us engineers.

What I don't see in this thread is the issue of people (like me) who don't have the option of driving a car. For this reason I can see myself largely living in either NYC or one of several European cities.

Charging homeowners fairly for their infrastructure costs is a hugely divisive and problematic issue. For example, hiking gas taxes would have all sorts of unintended consequences, not the least of which is inflation (since that cost is built into transporting food and everything else).

It seems fair(er) to build maintenance costs into property taxes and initial capital costs into land costs.

Peak oil [1] is either here or soon will be (IMHO we've already passed it). Arguably cities produce lower per-capita carbon footprints [2]. At some point people are going to need to realize that their gas-guzzling ways can't (and won't) continue forever.

[1]: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/01/nature-journal-study-pe...

[2]: http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/31/new-study-shows-t...