>I don't see myself ever not being a driver.
Cars aren't getting cheaper, car maintenance has become absurdly expensive (compared to what it was), auto insurance is set to get far more expensive, and making your entire lifestyle dependent on the existence of cheap gasoline is not a great strategy. A lot of people will simply be priced out of driving.
>It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
Personal car commuting gets in the way of vital freight trucking. The highway system wasn't built to facilitate people going to work or traveling to see their grandma, it was build to move goods.
>I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future,...
The more remote your living is, the more everyone else is subsidizing your existence. For instance, rural roads, rural hospitals, rural electrification, rural broadband, rural airports, etc. It's one thing for the people who already live there or genuinely need to live out there, it's another thing for people to choose to live out there for "personal reasons".