On the other hand, not everyone wants to live in or look at apartment buildings concrete jungle.
Just because you house multiple families in the same building does not mean you head straight for highrise central or ultra high-density concrete slabs.
Not really. It isn't an acceptable drop in quality of life that I would ever be willing to take.
>Inner-city Paris
Not affordable. Most people live in high-rises in the outer areas. Also paris isn't very nice anymore anyway.
Most people don't. Unfortunately they also want to live close to work, which is probably closer to city centres, which is where almost everyone works, which means you can't simultaneously satisfy both desiderata. The greater good here is higher density housing, not aesthetics.
Why? It's clear that efficiency drops precipitously with increased latency, which increase with distance. Locality is thus critical to efficiency, not to mention resource distribution is far more efficient in denser areas.
> Also, moving from a house to an apartment sure isn't just aesthetics. It is a massive drop in quality of life.
Only if your apartment complex and neighbourhood was poorly planned. Focus on that.