I mean there are genuine reasons you might want a house over an apartment. If you have a big family or the fact that you own it and don't have a land lord that can just raise rent and force you out. You gotta have a mix of types of housing that actually matches what the needs of the people are, which is still the exact problem we have now.

Or everyone could plant trees instead of just grass?

I couldn't live in a place that didn't have a workshop, that's what deters me from apartment blocks.

Build a co-op garden around the apartment and you've got yourself a deal.

Everyone in the place gets X amount of space. More then 60% of people won't garden at all and their share can be maintained by the gardeners.

Fruit trees and berry bushes will be grown for all to use.

Might be a silly question, but would it be better if we somehow turned suburbs into being more akin to rural towns? Like the suburbs could maybe have nearby town centers that they could walk to in 10-15 minutes that would allow small businesses to operate in.

I don’t live on the mainland, so no idea how it actually works.

I work in municipal develpment.

The thing with developers is that they build that density, but over ALL of the land. Apartments kill more trees and create more impervious cover than any other type of housing.

Our city requires parkland dedication for development. Single-family developments build public parks and preserve trees wherever possible. Apartments just pay a fee in lieu for tree mitigation and parkland dedication and improvements because they absolutely will not have a millimeter of land not dedicated to housing.

Maybe the problem isn't the houses. Maybe it's the grass lawns.

If the people living in apartments had a say in how they were built... yeah

Nobody chooses to live in a fucking tin can hanging from suspension wires that is so poorly insulated you can hear every bird flying into the windows as though you're inside a bass drum.

The sounds of my neighbors at 3 am snoring are not a feature you can call part of the "shared experience."

The prospect of being trapped together because the elevator went out and there's a fire... oh so joyous. Not to mention all the people's pets that get left at home throughout the day and I can hear crying with desperation to be let out as though they're in the next room...

I'm quite happy not to live in a fucking modern apartment thank you very much.

In this image I can't help but notice how much infrastructure cost there is here. Consider need for water treatment pipes run to and from each house for water and sewage as well as sewage treatment infrastructure. Keep in mind that failure rate increases with each house and by length of these runs that you are adding and fire hydrants being added every so many feet, shut off valves. Don't forget that we now have significantly bigger demand for water as we now have a lot more vegetation to manage and a higher reliance on emergency services as we are spread out over a larger area so we now have to increase ems, fire, and police spending. Then you add the costs for electrical infrastructure with your sub stations and transformers and all the costs set to maintain that especially since these are underground lines apparently and ofcourse we have increased risk of failure again per service and foot run and higher demand on those services which will require more workers which turns into money being spent outside of the community. You then add the cost of data lines and phone lines including the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading those which are also apparently underground which means your upgrades may be significantly more expensive and will take much longer to deploy. Now that we have all these houses separated we will now have a population that will be more dependent on vehicles so now we have to factor in all of our road maintenance costs and our public services will not require far more vehicles as well which means we will also need mechanics to repair and maintain these vehicles. Now with roads alone when we consider the costs involved things get rather expensive quickly. Cost to maintain roads, even roads that are seldom used, is surprisingly expensive and require a lot of workers to build and maintain as well as vehicles, machinery, and land to store, recycle, and create materials needed to repair and build the roads. On top of that there is also an often missed statistic of vehicles which is public safety as they are a leading cause for injury which is another stressor on our little community.

This is far from all the possibly missed costs of our suburban/rural neighborhood but I feel these are some of the important ones people live to overlook.

Throw 99 families into the sea and live on my private island.

How about having fewer kids? By definition nothing can be sustainable if population keeps growing.

This isn't how this would work. You'd get 100 houses, or 100 high rises.

I love my own yard with privacy and a firepit where I can get drunk, loud and high as a kite without anyone bothering me.

Apartment living was hell, it's what convinced me to get a house.

Best decision ever

Have you not heard of mixed density? There should be houses, semi, townhomes, 3 story walk-ups and apartment buildings. You could probably do all that and still keep 50% of the island nature.

The only thing i can see on the right bad is that many people dont like beeing cramped in with many other people. + want to have a garden Balcony can be a "garden" but not as good. I have nothing against the right, but keep in mind not everyone is the same.

The island on the right probably isn't as hot either.

Condos and Housing coops go a long way I think to reduce some of the pain points most people have had with apartment living. The issue now is that most people are comparing owning a home where you have a lot of control over your circumstances and price stability, vs having a landlord that is doing the minimum and raising rents every chance they can. If apartments were built for people, and not landlords would they still have cramped hallways and balconies, would they have poor insulation and sound proofing, would they have old noisy AC units, etc, etc. The thing is, even in cases where people do choose to not have an amenity, people still had the choice.