Why are we bringing in internet baggage here? The US lays its cities out this way due to regulations that codify this. We require that businesses have a certain amount of parking, that residential areas have a certain amount of parking. We require that homes can only be so tall, must have a certain Floor-to-Area ratio. We require that roads must be classified in a local-collector-arterial classification purely based on vehicular flow. We tell civil engineers that they should only build traffic lights if a minimum amount of pedestrian volume exists but that roads need to move a minimum number of cars by default. Sidewalks are required but not even 1/10th of the FHWA codes or the MUTCD deal with pedestrian or cyclist issues. These are all facts.

I'm not familiar with South Africa, but Australia also copied a lot of US auto-centric code regulations, so have no doubt that they did as well. But they very much aren't the norm. Most of Asia (outside of Middle Eastern cities and even here it's a mixed bag with Oman being different than the rest) and Europe are built around pedestrians.

If you think I'm just angry at the US due to some internet lefty baggage, then I don't know what to say. Japan shows that cars and pedestrians can coexist fine when you don't cater to just the car.