I used to live out in the country, on top of a mountain. I soon learned that you are not very close to nature that way because you spend most of your time driving. When I moved to the downtown area I could walk to get my errands done and doing so I could smell the flowers and feel the changing of the season. It was more natural. Very ironic.
Sprawl creates traffic congestion. Makes us dependent on getting our food shipped in from far off lands that probably don't have the same environmental regulations about pesticides and other things. Strengthens our dependence on oil. Makes them create food that will survive shipping rather than taste good. It is not sustainable in this way.
Eventually, developers locate places of employment in the exurbs and they soon become a new city center and people stop driving 60 mile commutes to the urban core. But this doesn't reduce the need for a car as things are still pretty spread out. The suburb is only 60 years old. It's neither inevitable nor the natural state of living.
It's a difficult subject. I live in a place that does not want any sprawl and also no development, and least of all dense development. So in effect, our sprawl is pushed into a neighboring county. It's a tough sell to people to make them understand that dense development does not mean something bad. Actually, I was single for a very long time and the only thing that made living downtown affordable for me was having a tiny apartment. Finding a good one can be hard. At the same time, people with families want big houses with yards.
But nobody wants the traffic. The kind of roads that sprawl creates cause bad traffic. The urban core usually has a grid network of streets. This is more efficient for traffic because traffic is spread out over a larger area. Also, the grid network is less isolating than cul-de-sacs and housing developments. I like the urban core because homes face the streets, you can wave to your neighbors as you take a walk. It's much more friendly. My life improved greatly when I moved downtown.
I truly believe the design of our cities is less about what people truly want and more about what makes developers and others the most money. Sure, it seems like we all want to drive a huge SUV 10 miles from our over-sized house that costs a fortune to heat in the winter and cool in the summer to Costco to by giant vats of food and 64 packs of toilet paper (you're gonna need it if you eat all that food) and turn into giant tubs of lard that have to take cholesterol medicine, diabetes medicine, and anti-depressants (because we'll never look good in a bathing suit again). I don't believe that's how we truly want to live. But somebody's benefitting from our living this way.