I think the primary difficulty is not telling planners this, but telling citizens. Most people are so ingrained to use cars in the US that any mention of transit or biking gets a pretty severely negative response, and I’ve seen this in people I know across conservatives, liberals, and even (dumbfoundingly) progressives/leftists. To do this well also requires more dense apartments and mixed use zoning, which similarly upsets many across the political spectrum.

I am somewhat hopeful the trends are angling towards proper cities, but my impression of those trends is that it is moreso forward thinking cities/planners trying their best against an extremely misinformed citizenry + our existing terrible infrastructure + under/misfunding + impossible bureaucracy. It’s going to take a lot of effort to get people to actually use alternatives, and I think those channels will only appeal to a very small bubble of urbanism focused leftists.

(side note: e-bikes are my personal urbanism bet; they seem good enough to vaguely navigate surface roads and even some stroad conditions, while being able to interface with old bike path networks, and can be easy to park in areas where cities provide bike racks. I’ve had a good experience with one, and no longer use a car for most trips)