A portion of that space is being occupied by a human, but it's not all being used by the human. We both know you know this.
Sometimes you want to get away from all people. Car is essential for this.
I'm not sure there is an example of a big, dense human-oriented city, but the closest examples (places like Venice, Ghent, Copenhagen) are wonderful places that have a completely different feel to a city like London or NYC.
I don't know how much of that is due to the size difference, but in London on the days where the city gets shut to traffic, it feels a much more welcoming, relaxing and pleasant place. The lack of constant car sounds and being able to walk where you want makes a huge difference in livability. It feels closer to when I used to live more rural.
Having a car is a nice luxury. Public transportation is a pain.
But you're right in a way. Driving is more pleasant than public transport, but it's completely not scalable as we've seen over the last 50 years. Rural living isn't scalable globally either except in relatively few countries (USA being one) due to the land and infrastructure constraints. The only reason driving a car and living rural seems affordable is you're not paying for the externalities, and are in a sparsely populated country.
Most people in the world are going to need to live most of their lives in urban built up areas, and it's right that public policy favours the those people, and that is best achieved by discouraging car use in favour of transit, walking and cycling.
If you want to drive a car that's fine, but people who do should pay the costs, and that includes the additional maintenance costs that delivery services should be charged for sending heavy destructive vehicles over rural roads. Kind of like flying first class.