Sure it'll last. Until they have children.
When I started working (19) I used to fantasize about buying a new car, but everything about them is a total money hole. You have to pay for somewhere to park it (just parking on the street is illegal in my city), then car tax, then insurance, then gas...
I guess I am blessed to live in a city (Nagoya) that is quite bikeable and has an adequate public transit system.
It's not too hard to raise toddlers in the city and have a nice walkable lifestyle. Sure getting around to do anything outside your immediate vicinity can be a challenge but it's not insurmountable if you have access to good public transportation.
Once you have school age kids though, it's a different ball game. Private school in the city is expensive, and often puts you in an upper class income demographic with all the pros/cons that come with that. Public school can vary from being great in progressive, well funded schools to absolutely horrible and filled with violence, apathetic teachers, and rampant drug use in under-served schools. Often there's a lottery system to get into the good schools in many cities, too.
Schools are the suburbs' trump card. Most of us that would love nothing more than to get out of the suburbs and away from our car-based lifestyle are pretty much held hostage by the school systems. The one "hack" I've seen become more common is home schooling, but this requires one person to stop working, thereby reducing the income to a point where city living becomes hard to afford.
When someone announces they are getting a new place, they often excitedly list the places nearby that they can walk to. Even if you have kids, if you're walking somewhere, a car isn't as important. Sure, they may have cars, but they might not use them for every trip.
:p
But seriously, unless you have the perfect storm of public transportation systems and public schooling systems, you're either getting a car to shuttle your kids to school or you move to the suburbs for better public schooling.
Of course there are exceptions. I'm talking trends, as this article is.