My "quality of life" is 1000% better than if I required a crowded train to take me to an urban "communal space" in order to enjoy nature.
Your own single-family home but so close to the neighbors that it's basically "I'm not touching you!" with enough space for the HOA-paid lawn service to squeak their mowers through twice a week.
Perfectly manicured grass, and no trees except a few sproutlings along the road because they were all cut down to raise the fill for the new roads and houses.
Your friend could live half a mile away as the crow flies, but they live in a different gated HOA community than you do, and you'd have to trespass through yards to walk directly there, so the route by road is more like 5 miles.
Every task you may want to do requires getting in your car and sitting at three traffic lights minimum.
The car pickup line at the elementary school overflows onto the main road everyday at 3pm with hundreds of Chevy Tahoes each picking up one child. These children may live within a few miles of the school but sending them out to walk or bike along the 50mph six-lane road that connects all of the gated communities is of course outright dangerous.
Shops and restaurants are dominated by chains because there's so little spontaneity of finding a new place, and not enough concentration of population or foot traffic for cool local businesses to find a niche.
...
I'm totally cool with living out in the woods, in a true rural lifestyle. I also like being places where maybe my personal living space is a bit more closed in but I get something in return for that. Walkable amenities. A sense of neighborhood or town community. Walking and biking trails. Cool local restaurants and shops and breweries that couldn't survive in the low-density rural environment or in the suburban hellscape.
It's that weird in-between that the US loved to build for the last 50 years, and is still building in a lot of places, that just seems dystopian to me.
Edit: And ironically lots of us Americans love visiting both of those other ends of the spectrum, and talk about what a lovely time they had, and then go back to their gated HOA suburb and get ready for the next day's school run.
Yep, bingo. People asking whether we really want these kinds of development only need to look at the price of housing in desirable walkable town centers. The home-buying market craves more of it.
I’m in a fairly small town but the price of a townhouse walkable to downtown is easily double an equivalent single-family detached suburban house a 10 minute drive away.
What do you mean imposed by law?
One town over has many more 6+ story buildings and townhouses. So folks over there have made a different choice about what kind of situation they want to live in. Is their town more walkable than mine? Not really but it does have even more variety on Main St due to increased density - great. They were clearly able to do the thing you're talking about because they wanted to.
// It is a compelled choice, even if only for a minority of the population.
I think we agree here, the point is that the law aligns (rather than contradicts) the desires of the local population. Which is different than people dying to replace their colonials with tenements but the government not letting them.
To some extent "everything" is compelled choice. I am precluded from building a cement factory in the middle of Bryce national park, but that probably is in line with the majority of people's desires.
The original comment above asserted that laws are forcing our communities to look as they do. My point is that the laws seem to by-and-large enable us to have our communities as we wish them to be.
This type of construction does not fit in the zoning requirements of many American suburban areas. That is a walkable community by your own description.
Building walkable communities does not require high rises.
Seems like zoning reflects people's desires and provides a diversity of lifestyles which is good. If a community/development wanted to be more walkable, they can make the zoning call on a very local level.
Prices increase, and some people cannot afford to live there. Where do they go?
If they move to your town, they are now "dissenters" for being the less-than-50% part of the population that might vote for things like higher density or mixed-used developments.
It's difficult to vote your choices in a place you don't already live.
You also describe a spectrum of types of places to live in a close geographic area that is not at all representative of most of the US. Being two-towns-over from Queens puts you in a majorly urban metro area with a level of density somewhat unique to older American cities and the Northeast in general.
In my experience the towns and neighborhoods with close density building (not necessarily high-rises, you can get way high density with single and double story development than the average Target/Costco suburb), are seen as very desirable in the housing market and generally command very high prices. Places with a Main Street, with local shops and restaurants, with walkable housing and mixed development.
These are the "cool neighborhoods" that people visit but often can't afford to live in. If supply of these places met or exceeded demand I would think they would be more affordable to buy housing in.
That's a form of third place. You don't need to be actively sharing it with other people but everyone still agrees that it's shared.