I don’t think sfh have been foisted on us by stupid or conniving urban planners.
It’s more interesting to ask why people don’t want to live in multi family dwellings. For example, if hearing your neighbors is a big part of the problem, would building code requiring sound baffling in every multi family start tipping the scales? Or if crazy neighbors was the issue, what about legal structures that let residents approve of new owners? (Yes, risky territory, but humor me for a second)
Multi family is generally seen as less appealing. So if you want people to live in multi family, how do we make it appealing?
You can see small attempts at dealing with the problems in e.g. the elimination of shared metering, which invited freeloader problems that simply don’t exist with individual metering.
If I could get a really well sound-insulated 3 or 4 bedroom apartment, awesome, but it's either just too hard to find, or too hard to verify that it'll actually be quiet without some certification/guarantee.
With a SFH you can control your own destiny to some extent.
Some multi-family housing operates as co-ops where existing owners vote on who is allowed to buy a unit. That can help to an extent. But some boards abuse their authority to discriminate against protected classes. And a board can't necessarily prevent an existing owner from allowing a crazy relative to move in.
> I don’t think sfh have been foisted on us by stupid or conniving urban planners.
No, it's been foisted on us by corrupt local city officials and massive suburban developers. They have systemically destroyed our city centers turning them into freeways while banning any other construction.
It’s more interesting to ask why people don’t want to live in multi family dwellings. For example, if hearing your neighbors is a big part of the problem, would building code requiring sound baffling in every multi family start tipping the scales? Or if crazy neighbors was the issue, what about legal structures that let residents approve of new owners? (Yes, risky territory, but humor me for a second)
Multi family is generally seen as less appealing. So if you want people to live in multi family, how do we make it appealing?
You can see small attempts at dealing with the problems in e.g. the elimination of shared metering, which invited freeloader problems that simply don’t exist with individual metering.