I've lived in Vancouver for nearly a decade now. I love it here, and the car-free lifestyle is a major part of the reason.
People use "Vancouver" to refer to either the city proper, or the Metro Vancouver area, which is 4x larger in population. I suspect the statistics you quoted are for the city proper. The rest of the region is not a uniform dormitory wasteland, but it has a long way to go to get to where the city is now.
Even in the city proper, most of the land area is taken up by a grid of low-density single-family homes. Calling these areas walkable is a real stretch - some residential streets don't even have sidewalks! But there is a sizeable dense core around the downtown area, and - crucially - many of the major through streets act as backbones for dense, walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods.
This zoning map tells the story.
Region-wide planning policy prioritizes dense mixed-use development and car-free transport, gradually expanding into the older residential-only zones.
This is especially true in Vancouver itself, which has virtually no room to expand outward.
I recall hearing the mayor say that the stock of single-family homes is part of the city's past but there is no room for them in a sustainable future.
The key architectural artifact in this transformation is the
mixed-use condo tower. In new construction, the first 1-2 floors are
always reserved for services (shops, offices/clinics, public amenities etc). This turns out to be more or less exactly the right amount of commercial built-up space, given that these neighbourhoods have very few commercial plazas, no strip malls, no big box stores.
Nowadays, when I visit other cities and see residential or office towers with a giant useless lobby on the ground floor, it really saddens me.
There are virtually no increases in car-carrying capacity in the city. In fact, some arterial road capacity has been taken down, to make room for bike lanes, or more mixed-use development.
This is causing real pain to real people, and many locals are furious with the program.
Some of them haven't yet come to terms with the fact that car-commuting in this region is impossible to sustain.
Others say that, given the astronomical cost of housing in Vancouver, this agenda ends up pampering the rich while choking the less fortunate.
In the end, whether Vancouver is a car-free urban paradise, or an overcrowded slum plagued by traffic jams, depends on your priorities and lifestyle choices.
Mustachians of the HCOL persuasion may find it very appealing.
Just ask Zikoris.