Until cultural pressure of nonacceptance of ecologically irresponsible suburban car-dependent lifestyle begins to outweigh traps of familiar American lifestyle, the suburbs will be there.
On the other hand, increasing energy consumption per person is exactly equal to civilization and rising standards of living, so let's not be too hasty in condemning carbon footprint. Of course, ideally the energy we spend would be generated and stored via other sources; and technology will likely lead us in that direction.
In contrast, IIUC, landlines are basically not a thing in large parts of China because China adopted the telephone as a mass-market service so late that they had the option of making cellular-telephone network so reliable and so ubiquituous as to eliminate the need to run a wired telephone network to every residence, and IIUC China took that option.
The fact that China is full of cars is (because Chinese policy makers are sensible practical people) at least some evidence that the alternative you advocate is not as great as you think it is.
To quote from https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/ ("Conservation of Expected Evidence"):
>So if you claim that “no sabotage” is evidence for the existence of a Japanese-American Fifth Column, you must conversely hold that seeing sabotage would argue against a Fifth Column. If you claim that “a good and proper life” is evidence that a woman is a witch, then an evil and improper life must be evidence that she is not a witch. If you argue that God, to test humanity’s faith, refuses to reveal His existence, then the miracles described in the Bible must argue against the existence of God.
Habitat, sure, but farmland and aquifer recharging? I'd wager most suburbs in the US are cut out of forests, not existing farmland, and I see no reason why rainfall in the suburbs (low-density, with grass lawns) won't reach the aquifer the same way as whatever undeveloped land was there previously. In fact, dense cities will do worse in this regard, since there's more underground infrastructure and stormwater has to run off more.