European cities are much more compact than American. Americans want to live in suburbs in their own houses and drive cars, Europeans have no problem to live in apartments in city and use public transport or bikes. It's generalization, but it goes back to history how European vs American cities were built, so it's nothing really to be proud about, of course ideal would be having house close to downtown but that's just not realistic, in Europe you can have at least apartment, in US usually you don't have even this option in many smaller towns.

Many Europeans nowadays can't reach property prices in cities and are forced to live in suburbs where they end up commuting by cars, same as Americans (I can see that in my family, my sister and cousin rather build house outside and drive cars + switch to train, personally I am against this since I don't want to be taxi driver of my children, so I opt for apartment in city in walking distance to subway, but I am the weird one because I prefer apartment over holy grail - own house, but my sister can enjoy her 1 hour commute and she is extremely lucky her work is next to train station, otherwise it would be like 1.5 hour one way which I say no thanks, I didn't travel that much even in pretty big Beijing).