Developers "love" building that stuff because... it's what zoning allows them to build. You would need to actually look at a place with better zoning to see a

Developers "love" building that stuff because... it's what zoning allows them to build. You would need to actually look at a place with better zoning to see a functional example, like suburban metropolitan Japan or France or Spain, where neighborhoods are often made of tightly-clustered detached homes (e.g. the old-fashioned Victorian row home equivalent) mixed with corner store retail.