Not strawman, but this guy just has Burgerbrain: the only choices he can conceive of are those in the US. Anyone who has been to any suburb in Europe or Japan knows that you can easily build housing that is well between "high rise hellscape" and the extremely large parcels in most US suburbs. It's mostly about allowing those options to be built, which most zoning currently precludes. Any non-SFH-only residential area is so expensive and rare in North America that only high-rises make sense to justify the land cost. Meanwhile, everyone in the burbs will fight tooth and nail against allowing multiplex construction because they think it will lower land value somehow (and is often code for "we don't want the poors moving in here").