When you argue for housing reform to legalize denser development in our cities, you quickly learn that some people hate density. Like, really hate density, with visceral disgust and contempt for any development pattern that involves buildings being tall or close together.
My mom’s family lived in a small town (not her immediate family, her dad moved them around, he did construction) and she said she would never ever want to raise kids in a small town because “when there is nothing to do, they get in trouble” and indeed, her cousins and nieces and nephews did. She sent her niece Susan $500 at graduation for making it through without getting pregnant or arrested!
We did grow up in sort of a suburb but with a university, library, sports and dance places, buses to downtown, plenty of places to work and parks and stuff. I moved into the city proper, but not downtown. My kids thank me for not raising them on the outskirts. I do think more urban is better than suburbs and uptown like we are is ideal, a “development” from the 1940s a couple miles from downtown, not in the direction of the very rich people. There are both houses and apartments here and it’s fine. There were where I grew up too.