European and asian cities pretty much feel like a 10x - 20x bigger house for many.

You walk down 2 blocks to get some milk and bread for the breakfast, post office is 3 blocks in the other direction, 1 block another way and you have fruits and vegetable. Basically you can treat the immediate surroundings as an extension of your house where you just "go" without a modal distinction of getting into a car, parking, back into the car, parking again.

Even taking a bus or train feels less of a discontinuation as you just walk in walk out and at no point have to switch to a "driver" mode.

I dunno, I used to feel this friction (I didn't use to drive until I was ~30), how driving is a thing and not driving is frictionless, but I think it was just psychological. It feels reverse now - the only frictionless places for ~everyone are grocery stores and such, cause they are everywhere. And maybe things you consciously live next to, like if you decide to live next to an olympic pool facility or a nightclub. Transit has pretty high fixed cost of getting anywhere, even in transit friendly placed like Munich or Moscow.. everything takes at least 30-40 minutes given to/from and wait times, any time of day. And that's if you don't have any transfers. I used to take it for granted but now when I look up transit directions it just weird to think it used to take so long and I thought it was normal.

Whereas if you drive you can choose when to go and so make it convenient - like I go to a climbing gym at 6am in winter, no traffic and less people. Also, many things you don't even need to leave the house for - even with a relatively small house (1100sqft) I have room for a weight rack and home office, no need to go to a real office or to a gym.

This is why I personally prefer biking. I'm about to bike to the climbing gym. The one I like to go to is a 15 min bike ride away, so I'm already warmed up by the time I get to the gym. Likewise I can go whenever I want to avoid crowds.