If we go by your parent's photos, my main beef with these neighborhoods is there's no commercial development. There should be (light) commercial development.

I am a big fan of the Asian shophouse. You can open a restaurant or a convenience store or a small clinic or whatever class of local service business isn't going to be too disruptive on the bottom floor of your residential property. You need to own and operate it, it can't be someone from outside the community. People eat, shop and live together and spend more locally. Small businesses get easier to create. Everyone has neighbors again. People walk two blocks down instead of driving 30 minutes to Walmart. Yes I'm stacking multiple social agendas here.

You probably do have to go towards medium density for this to be viable but maybe if you don't you still end up with people taking a lot of 10 minute car rides instead of 30-40 minute ones and then it's still a win in my book.