Oh man, please allow me to do my best to offer some subjective validation of your life choices.
I grew up in one of the small, very coastal Australian towns that stayed beautiful but got expensive and boring (alternative seems to be: grew big and turned awful, not much middle ground here).
This was a ride your bike to school at 6 years old, spend one third of your life in the ocean, "just try to be home for dinner" town.
Then I spent some time in some of the nicer, central suburbs of a second tier Aussie city.
Then some small, blue collar northern European industry towns, then a major southern European city.
Of those, and given the chance/choice, I'd raise children in the tiny coastal village and the dense European city (within 100m of my apartment - pedestrian streets - there were two small playgrounds, a market, a school, a library, a park, the beach was a 15min walk). Anywhere between those two extremes and adventure turns into a thoroughly planned outing, with a strict time limit on the paid parking if you got lucky and found a spot.
The moderate densities are (or become) sprawling nothings with one coles/woolies/liquorland/bws/bunnings "hub" and long commutes to anywhere. Like you, many of my friends who plan to become young families seem to gravitate towards these starter-package lives, and although I'm probably listening for it, I hear the same regret and resignation from them that you do.
Older relatives live in more expensive versions of the same thing, with a better quality finish on the bathroom and a glass fence on the pool they never use, and an 80k SUV for the just-as-long commute. There might be a flashy bowls club filled with pokies instead of a shitty tavern filled with pokies.
Keep fighting the good fight. We build these 5 bedroom homes in the suburbs so that we're comfortable staying home. Because there's nothing to do outside, because we spent so much energy building nothing suburbs.