Can confirm .. I grew up in a country (Australia) which is practically impossible to live in, without a car .. then I moved to California and did everything I could to avoid the commutes (really a very difficult task), lived there for 15 years and only managed to optimize my life to be able to walk around LA/my neighborhood in the last few years of it .. then moved to Japan for a year, where everything I needed to survive was within a 10 minute walk of my apartment - and then to Austria, in a city that was laid out a thousand years ago to be navigable by foot, and still is.

Commuting is one of the worst aspects of the Western world. The fact that hundreds of millions of people have to sit in their cars, for hours every day, to get to work/play/live, is just a tragedy. I truly hope the next hundred years proves much, much more fruitful for those of us who are willing to change lifestyles to avoid the commute. Its a huge drag.