Sounds like you have a crap public transportation system if the kids under 16 can't "go to places".
EDIT: You don't need a car to allow cross-country mobility; trains are more than adequate. Here in Europe you can travel from Portugal to Finland on rail, and we can visit up to 30 countries for less than $500 with an InterRail pass.
I live downtown in a major city with relatively good public transport options now (Seattle), but before I lived in small-town New England where public transportation is essentially nonexistent. If you can't drive you're not going anywhere. Most of America doesn't have access to good public transport -- you either aren't American or you know this already and are just spoiled by living in a city. Hey, I am too! :)
> I live downtown in a major city with relatively good public transport options now (Seattle),
Having lived in Seattle, Berlin, New York, Montreal, and San Francisco, I would say that Seattle's transit is unusably bad (as is SF's, the other 3 are rather good).
I think the issue here isn't that cars aren't necessary in the States (obviously they are), rather that that's a result of insanely pro-car anti-anything-else public policy in the States, and not because driving is 'naturally' so empowering. It's hard to think of a wealthy country where a city as large as Seattle would have such terrible non-car transportation, yet Seattle is even above average by American standards.
>If you can't drive you're not going anywhere. Most of America doesn't have access to good public transport
This is the problem. Would cars be worth their expense and inconvenience if there were decent public transportation, walkable cities, or people could generally live near where they worked?
Maybe, maybe not, but that doesn't really mean anything in the context of this discussion. Most of the world doesn't have decent public transportation, in part because it's difficult and expensive to create decent public transportation, and in part because public transportation isn't a great fit for where most of the people of the world live. Unless you're suggesting that everyone should be relocated to arcologies so we could all give up our cars, the fact of the matter is that public transport isn't always an option, and may not ever be an option for anyone who doesn't live in a hyperdense urban area, which most people would consider to be hell on earth (not me, but I have an affinity for big cities).
In the developed world, while there's ample examples for great public transport, I have a hard time saying what percentage of it has decent coverage (whatever that is). Maybe it's as simple as saying it's mostly shit in the US and mostly decent in Europe, with the rest of the developed world also split, so about 50/50.
Most of the world doesn't have decent public transport because most of the world is -- rapidly -- developing. In the same vein, most of the world doesn't have decent internet access (I'm not saying the two are very similar in other regards). It's a bit early to say whether the developing world will end up with decent public transport. They're certainly trying with some success. They're also acquiring cars at an astounding rate, they're going to have to do major infrastructure works at enormous cost either way, hopefully they're smart about it.
As for the rest; living without a car doesn't require anybody to live in an arcology or in a "hyperdense" urban area. Most of the world (ie >50%) already lives in an urban area. There are lots of medium-sized or even big cities that aren't hyperdense by any sensible definition of that word. I don't think most people consider it hell on earth.
Not without going through Russia. There is no longer any passenger train connection between Finland and Sweden, so that would require either going through Saint Petersburg or crossing the Baltic by ship. You can however do the trip by car; it's just going to cost _a lot_.
Has been a while since I made that trip, but IIRC the ferries between Finland and Sweden give discounts if you have an Interrail ticket. And they're not that expensivr to begin with, at least if you don't have a car with you.
I'm now living in Berlin instead of Helsinki, and I take trains to go pretty much everywhere in Europe. When you factor in the time of getting from/to airport, security checks etc. it is often nearly as fast and much more comfortable. As I write this, I'm having lunch near the railway station before leaving for a conference in France. Usually I'd eat in the train but now I happened to have the time to spare...
EDIT: You don't need a car to allow cross-country mobility; trains are more than adequate. Here in Europe you can travel from Portugal to Finland on rail, and we can visit up to 30 countries for less than $500 with an InterRail pass.