Every complaint about apartments stems from American inner city dilapidation. My first culture shock when arriving in the US was the sorry state of American apartments.

We know how to build apartments that are insulated to sound. Common building courtyards give kids safe play-areas within walking distance while supervised. Balconies can be built large and large common areas give people all the space they need.

Back in India, urban army cantonments used to be one of the best places to live. Funnily enough, they were simply gated colonies with large apartment complexes, and the recovered space was used for community activities and sports. That's all we're talking about.

Take the same surface area. You can choose to build in 2d (SFH) or in 3d (buildings). No where does this imply stuffing people like sardines. All they're saying is that if you optimize for your priorities in 3d it is unlikely that the 2d edge case will be most effective outcome.

The desire for privacy is a reflection of a society failing to provide.

I wrote this about if the situation was reversed: https://gist.github.com/numtel/28ffb7181ad1a296a077db76c474b...

Honestly it's weird that people decide they know how other people want to live, both ways. Obv it stems from folks assuming that their values and wants are universal therefore anything derived from those is obvious, but some folks have some pretty extreme confidence in knowing other people's preferences.

The problem isn't that people are allowed to live in detached houses with yards, it's that they're not allowed to live anywhere else. Plenty of people evidently want to live in apartment buildings - it wouldn't be necessary to make them illegal otherwise.