Seriously, why is this idea being thrown around? It's not based in reality, and just fuels into pessimism. I'm American, so I'll mostly focus on what I'm seeing here.
There has been so much progress, even just over the past decade. I think the reason that it feels like not much is being done is because the United States is so Massive. Even just New York can contain Beligum, Switzerland and the netherlands.
Looking at the US on a macro scale could give someone a picture of a country eternally doomed to have shitty transit and suburban sprawl forever. Thankfully, we have a beautiful think called local government.
There are a good number of places that you can go in the US that are very walkable and have good transit. Sure, it's not on the level of Europe, but it's definitely a good starting point if we're talking about progress. Especially if we're talking about progress within our lifetimes.
There are a lot of cool projects going on in the US right now, such as new rail lines, rail extensions, new BRT lines, and work being done on density. And of course roped into that we can't forget about the massive California High-Speed Rail project, which if successful could have major implications for rail in the United States at large.
Is this enough? No. But it is real progress, and a sign that we're at the beginning of real change in this country for transit and walkability.
And if you still think the US is shit and you really feel inclined to move out of your current suburban hell hole, you don't even have to leave the US to do so. There are cities where you can go today in the US where you don't have to own a car and can get around by walking. Not everything is a 6 lane stroad with giant parking lots and dead strip malls. We have DC, Philly, Boston and NYC as prime examples, which may not seem like much but NYC alone has 8.8 million people and could sure as shit fit way more.
Sure, we may never live to see the whole US become the netherlands, but I don't think it's unrealistic to think that certain places in the US could be seriously be at that level within our lifetimes.
I love how this entire post is written in a way that assumes that the US = North America.
In many ways, Canada is even more fucked than America. Many Canadian cities have been amalgamated with their surrounding suburbs in order to usurp urbanists from city governments.
Of course, there will always be a handful of awesome walkable neighborhoods, but they will continue rising in price until nobody can afford living in them. You can make arguments all you want at the local scale, but the macro scale says that we aren't building enough dense housing to keep up with population growth (in Canada at least), which means we are still not on a good trajectory. Until some of those indicators start moving in a different direction, it's reasonable to claim that North America is "doomed" in the sense that they aren't actually addressing the problem, and the problem gets worse the longer it goes unaddressed.
I tried to make it clear that I'm talking about the US because I live here, I said North America so I could loop it in with the current NJB stuff.