A lot of this waste is a function of population density. With a super-dense city, where almost every conceivable product is within walking range (and, as a bonus, it's expensive to move around in cars) and prices are normalized, retail stores make sense. As the density drops down, people get into cars and often ignore their local stores, driving far out chasing rare items or discounts. Which is stupid (gas costs too) and wasteful in aggregate at the same time.
If you want to get rid of personal point-to-point tranportation tech, you have to provide something more convenient or get more coercive than most of the country has the political will for. Walking in winter cold or summer heat simply isn't that for most people. People enjoy privacy, people enjoy personal space, people enjoy their own music and conversation, etc.
It's similar to how you won't roll back the clock on iPhones and Facebook simply by posting nostalgic articles for the way things used to be. You have to address the added utility that has caused the adoption.
Mass motorization and suburbanization were driven by government policy and still are. For every consumer dollar spent on driving, the government spends ten (wish I could cite this, but I can't find it at the moment).
I'm not saying cars aren't appealing, or that they don't have utility, just that the situation most Americans find themselves in, where the built environment favors cars to the exclusion of all other modes of transportation, is the result of public policy interacting with (or distorting) markets rather than a pure expression of individual preference.
Sure, in a dense enough area--which I don't live in; I'm basically rural--things like basic grocery shopping are a short walk away. But lots of the things I order from Amazon would probably take some serious looking around even in Manhattan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...