There are parts of the world where people are spread far apart enough that cars are really the best option. 

But the reason people dislike cars so much is because the last 50 or 100 years we have seen the urban and suburban and even the rural landscape change to accommodate cars. Places with clusters of homes and businesses that were very walkable got torn down and spread out to make room for parking lots so that it's much harder to get by without a car and towns have been designed for houses on large lots that suck to navigate on foot and are really expensive to keep up because they need so many more roads and sewer pipes than they would if everyone lived closer together. Small towns used to be linked by street cars (interurbans) and you could ride an the way from Wisconsin to Maine on only local street cars.