I'm not sure that Europe is actually much better than the US in terms of attitudes towards suburban/car-centric design, I think the reason why we have mostly avoided it is down simply to the historic patterns of development. Certainly in Britain, anywhere outside the major cities, most of the development seems to be extremely suburban - estates of tiny detached houses with tiny private gardens/yards, often just off a roundabout on a main road, tacked on to the edge of an existing town or village, without any idea about creating new public spaces, or walkability. Often these estates are mandated to have only one exit or entrance, in order to discourage crime (this is called 'security by design', and naturally kills any sense of a continuous settlement). This is still going full throttle even now.
I have heard that in Europe, taxation on property is based solely on the area, encouraging upward growth, while in the US the value of what you build on it also factors in. Therefore, in the US, a flat parking lot is not as expensive/wasteful as it would be in Europe. I can't speak to it generally, but it did seem my experiences of European downtown areas did not include private parking lots, but rather more parking garages.
