North America has multiple generations growing up around car centric infrastructure that most people can't even fathom the idea that cars cause many problems that we face today like suburban sprawl, pollution, poverty

Access to transportation is a key component to social mobility and requiring car ownership to participate in society greatly punishes the poor -- and I suspect that's by design

tl;dr American cities were built for cars, not people

That may not be the author's explicit conclusion, but it's an easier sound bite and more direct.