There’s a lot of comments posting personal preference in housing, but that’s basically irrelevant. Density and urban planning basically comes down to freedom.

There’s a lot of comments posting personal preference in housing, but that’s basically irrelevant. Density and urban planning basically comes down to freedom. How much freedom do we allow? On one end of the spectrum, the fully suburban city (like your average American city) allows virtually no freedom. As land value rises, you hit a maximum density (prescribed by minimum lot size, maximum height, minimum lot setbacks, parking requirements, and maximum number of housing units) and this becomes the shape of the city. If you allow more freedom on some or all of these dimensions, then as land value rises developers will purchase lots and infill or redevelop. The rest of the city stuff that urbanists talk about (trains, bike lanes, parks and walkability, etc) all become increasingly valuable to everybody as density goes up. So the options are freedom or suburbs. Many Americans prefer suburbs, which is understandable. The American suburban dream is a beautiful one, but undoubtedly built to suppress freedom (from inception: a way to allow middle class white people to escape the minorities and poors of the city in post-war america, keeping them away through redlining first and then by stringent zoning and expensive housing later)