"It doesn't work" is possibly too harsh, see my other answer. But in the best cases, these developments turned into extremely boring places with almost no conta

"It doesn't work" is possibly too harsh, see my other answer. But in the best cases, these developments turned into extremely boring places with almost no contact between neighbours. Today, it's exclusively elderly people living there. There are a few factors I've heard for this trend: - There are ample green spaces between houses, but they're too small for some of the purposes parks serve, like sports, or to have barbecue without someone calling the police. - At the same time, they don't replace gardens because you wouldn't be allowed to grow anything. - They are, however, large enough to lower the density of the neighbourhood, to a point where retail locations are no longer comfortably reachable on foot. It's not quite obvious from looking at it, but my second example has probably 4x the people per area than the first. - Depending on the social structures, these developments can further crime because they offer many small, unobservable spaces and getaway routes. Some of it may also be the result of the location where these developments were build, or that they were initially occupied by a very homogenous population (young families in the 60ies -> old people now). But the trend has moved decidedly towards higher-density mixed environments.