Another good source on human-scale urban design is Nathan K. Lewis. He has a great set of postings on traditional cities. An interesting point is the surprising commonality of organic urban building throughout the world, with the exception of the US.
His recipe is mass-transit, "really narrow streets," and mixed-zoning.
The writer James Howard Kunstler believes that the American choice of suburban-oriented development was the "greatest misallocation of resources" in history. His TED talk on the topic is worth watching.
I up-voted you. So many people -- including people prone to gloominess -- seem to reproduce without thinking of the fact that they are forcing another human into existence who may not enjoy life very much.
At the risk of overgeneralizing our particular species/planetary history, the point you raise has been suggested as an explanation for the Fermi Paradox by Ugo Bardi and John Michael Greer.
If another life-bearing planet eventually evolves an intelligent species, than it certainly evolved an equivalent of our phytoplankton, zooplankton, and plants, the precursors of fossil fuels
As the intelligent species develops it eventually discovers its planet's equivalent of fossil fuel. But it does not understand that this extremely power-dense source has no true substitute, until it is too late.
There is reason for guarded optimism if we can eliminate, or at least drastically reduce, irresponsible use of antibiotics:
The capacity to resist antibiotics extracts a small metabolic/competitive "tax" on bacteria. In the presence of antibiotics, the costs of this tax are outweighed by the obvious benefits of antibiotic resistance.
In an environment without antibiotics, the costs of the tax outweigh their benefits, so these antibiotic-resistant bacteria will eventually be outgrown by "normal" bacteria.
If we can discipline ourselves to use antibiotics only when necessary, gradually antibiotic-resistant bacteria should become less common. Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen until the antibiotic-resistance problem becomes much more serious.
Anesthetized basic dentistry adds more to our quality of life than much of the modern "healthcare" industry.