It's also such a vicious cycle - you make lots of parking space, people find it easy to park AND very hard to get from place to place without a car, because everything's so spaced out.
Also - even if things are in walkable distance, there's the assumption that all travel is by car. I stayed in one motel that was super close to a steak restaurant - I was like perfect, I can walk over, get steak and have a couple of glasses of red wine.
Could I heck - I tried. There was no sidewalk. No path.