As the sibling says, Cities Skylines definitely does a better job than its predecessors of legitimizing non-car strategies for managing transportation. However, as the player, the path of least resistance is absolutely to just do roads everywhere and bulldoze buildings and houses to widen roads (just like in the real world). I don't think CS has much/any modeling for the longer-time-horizon benefits of an active-transportation city, in terms of culture, health, pollution reduction, and so on.

So yes, it's a major step forward in terms of it being possible at all, but it's something you have to be pretty intentional about— and maybe that's reflective of the real world too. But it's always nice when media (games, books, movies, whatever) inspires us to dream bigger than we might otherwise have done.