Change the apartment to a condo and the answer shifts quite a bit. Condos offer lots of amenities and more luxury. Many people choose condos over houses because they like the lifestyle of not maintaining property and living in a dense area with lots of things to do. Even people living in suburban houses like dense cities, they just spend an hour driving to the city for evening or weekend recreation activities that a condo resident can walk to.

One problem with the picture is that if you want to spend much time doing certain things in nature, such as camping or kayaking, you need storage space for equipment. Condos and apartments tend to lack storage space.

you’d be hard-pressed to find one that actually likes it better.

It's definitely a cultural thing. Here in Korea, the vast majority prefer apartments. Lower maintenance. More security. Convenience. The social aspect.

As a student, I would rather rent in a modern apartment building than a house. No yard to take care of, closer to other stuff (grocery store is literally across the street), safer, no insects. I would 100% rather have a nice apartment over a meh house.

There are reasons I chose to live in my apartment.

You can achieve a very high quality of life if you are willing to waste resources. See private jets for an example.

If we want to preserve nature, we need to live denser than the large detached single family homes pictured.

However, row houses with a coop garden is probably a good compromise where people don't have upstairs neighbors, and can grow things for fun. But you aren't taking up a ton of space.