These threads are full of people making the straight-up weakest arguments for destroying nature...

"...but privacy and noise!"

Ugh, just take all that money you would have spent on the ridiculous driveways, extra lengths of road, utilities, and lawn care and put it into higher quality building materials for the apartments/townhouses.

We build crap quality places in the US and all I hear from my fellow countrymen is "we can't (or don't want to) do it any other way".

Unfortunately, where I live it's very hard to find a well-made apartment or townhouse. I love the idea of an apartment or townhouse where I couldn't hear the neighbours no matter what they were doing, and I couldn't smell their cooking, or be exposed to smoke when they're smoking, and so-on. But, that just isn't realistic. Even if laws were passed to make that a requirement as of today, it would be decades for the existing housing stock to be sold off.