I am European.

What a ridiculous generalization. Everyone has their own preferences, needs, and wants.

So I'm actually British, not American, but I think we largely have similar attitudes towards desiring a house here. I think most European countries do too, really, once you get past a certain age. I'm not sure about how Asians are on average, but most Asians I know would certainly prefer to live in a house if they're past their mid 30s.

There are a few European countries where >50% of people live in flats: Spain for example. In Spain, however, the reason most people say they live in a flat isn't out of preference, it's because houses are too expensive. The other thing to note is that the European countries where flat habitation is popular tend to have interesting reasons behind it. In many cases, it's because they were built during the Soviet era.

I do think those community amenities are valuable, whether people live in houses or flats. I live in London, in an area with quite a good sense of community. I have an allotment, help at the community garden, live next to a very well maintained park, etc. but it really isn't the same as having your own private space. For example with the building stuff, I used to go to a Hackerspace, but I'm getting a lot more done now that I have a bunch of equipment at home. Simply getting things to and from my old Hackerspace was a nightmare without a car. Shared spaces also have rules which may not be compatible with what you're trying to do. My allotment doesn't allow irrigation systems, for example, so my little automated irrigation project in my garden wouldn't go down too well there!

Plus there are all these small things like talking to my neighbours over the wall, being able to easily get my bicycle in and out, not having to walk up 12 flights of stairs because someone is moving in and has the lift blocked, etc. One of my favourite things to do in this past warm summer was to just work outside in my garden, in the breeze, with my laptop plugged into my outdoor sockets, fast WiFi and the ability to just pop into the kitchen for drinks.

I'm not saying flats shouldn't be made more tolerable - but aside from density meaning you can live closer to the centre, is there any case where a flat is really a better quality of life?

Also an interesting thing to consider is: how different is building vertically with elevators, versus building horizontally with trains, anyway?

My house is actually semi-detached with a driveway and flower beds, rather than detached, but there is one huge disadvantage to town houses: it's practically impossible to get equipment into your garden, which makes a lot of landscaping really, really difficult. Even just getting forks and soil into your garden is bound to make a mess of your house. Terraces (like town houses but with front gardens or driveways) are very popular in the UK, but most people will ultimately prefer a semi-detached for that reason.

An interesting approach we used to have was where rather than adjoining gardens at the back, we'd put an path down the back of the townhouses between the gardens, with a door into each garden, so you could easily walk/cycle and, if needed, get equipment into your back garden. Apparently we stopped doing that because those alleys turned into major crime and antisocial behaviour hot spots, and people stopped buying houses with alley access due to people constantly jumping your fence and nicking anything in your garden that wasn't tied down.

Where I grew up was like a townhouse/semi-detached hybrid - the upper two floors were terraced, but at ground level there was a car garage that connected the street and back garden. A lot of people don't like that design because it's associated with council homes (mine was a council home), but I actually thought it was a best of both worlds.

In the UK, we don't often to have miles of suburbs without a grocery store. That's a separate choice around car centricity that the US has made.

I live in London, in a suburb, but within a 10 minute walk, I have multiple pubs, doctors, dentists, restaurants, small supermarkets, library, community garden and - most importantly - a train station that takes me into central London in about 10 minutes.

The way we structure housing here tends to be arranged around lots of smaller satellite town and villages connected to a large city centre. Big cities like London will provide trains for commuters and going "out out", but in a smaller town you often live a lot of your social life more locally and might commute to work by car.

The other thing in the UK is our houses aren't particularly large. A terrace home might not be more than 50% bigger than an apartment, but you get a garden, driveway and actually own some real land.

I just go to Walmart often.

And the wonderful solitude and quiet of my old house in a dying town contrasts sharply with my college years living in apartments.

I do think there is something different that leads Americans to desire homes and consider apartment living a failure.

Some of it is the rhetoric about owning a home being part of the American Dream. Some of it is about the nature of the US housing market being a such an avenue to wealth (Americans have a disproportionate amount of their wealth wrapped up in their home). Some of it may be the individualistic mindset.

American apartments in general are shoddily constructed and thus are a lower quality of living. There's no getting around that. Walls that are paper thin with no insulation so you can listen in on your neighbor's phone calls. Poorly done ceilings/floors so the upstairs neighbors' kids running around wakes you up in the morning. Single pane glass so heating/cooling bill is expensive, and the sounds of the street are audible throughout the day (you never want to live above a bus stop). Neighbors from all walks of life, which can be a nightmare if those walks of life include drug dealers and addicts and domestic violence, with norecourse from the police. No elevators up to the fifth floor. No trash pickup for large items. Shite public transportation and no good parking options. Horrible corporate landlord management company to contend with.

I would love to live in an apartment complex in, say, Sweden, but there's a huge cultural component to apartment living in America that would have to change before it matches apartment living elsewhere. Even if building codes changed tonight it would still wouldn't address the issues of city design/public transportation that hurt the very notion of living that tightly together to begin with. It's just not at all convenient to live in an apartment complex that's miles away from the nearest public transportation hub or even a strip mall.

Home ownership rate in the US had been over 60% for a long time. Because of that there is a high chance that your apartment neighbors grew up in a detached home and have no habits that apartment dwellers teach their children. Combined with the fact that apartments are usually temporary accommodations this can produce very disruptive neighbors.

This is not unique to America, all the countries that went through rapid urbanization that moved millions of former farmers from detached homes into city apartments have an archetype of a rural rube unable to accommodate to communal living with strangers.

One person in your apartment complex is filthy and has bugs, everyone in your building has bugs. I don't have that problem in my house.

Also a house blowing up due to cooking meth - down the street, which is not connected to your house - is a much better situation.

Dirt bikes and teenagers partying the woods is definitely the better option too, imo.

"We live in a society" - true but one of these things is clearly better than the other. It's just not very convincing to think people want to be stuffed into apartments.

I mean like a garden, a pool, a wood/metal working shop, gun range, kids play area, badminton court etc.