I think the problem here is you're taking a personal feeling (that you want to live in a big suburban house), projecting it over a population (suggesting everyo

I think the problem here is you're taking a personal feeling (that you want to live in a big suburban house), projecting it over a population (suggesting everyone wants to live in a big suburban house) and swatting away any disagreements (where people say they don't necessarily want to live in a big suburban house) without really taking on board what they're saying. I don't think you can be convinced to change your mind, but you should recognise that the lifestyle you're describing is unsustainable at scale - huge chunks of continental Europe would be entirely paved over if we lived this way, or even if they were just at the density of somewhere like Houston or LA. Re "apartments really suck" - I beg to differ. I live in a 1920s apartment block in an inner-city neighbourhood, it's 50m from a school where my neighbours kids walk every day (high school is further, but they'll take the trolley or tram), there's a cafe on the corner, a couple of local pubs on my street, and a supermarket 5 mins walk away. I don't hear neighbours through the walls, we have a shared garden with an apple tree and grape vines. I walk ~10 minutes to meet friends at my local cinema, and walk my dog in a handful of different parks which are between 5 and 15 minutes walk away. Can you please explain what part of any of this "sucks" because I am personally struggling to see it. I suspect you'll suggest that my situation is exceptional (it's not, this describes most accommodation where I live) and counter that it's possible to make a bad apartment. But really it's possible to fuck up any kind of housing development - the UK has some spectacular examples of both shit tower blocks and shit single-family dwellings last century for starters. So the difference is that those single home developments also incur a pretty stiff cost to cities, society and the environment that you cannot handwave away unless you just want to say “well I don’t mind if the rest of the world sucks, as long as I get to have a big garden”