[sabjut]

Detached housing increases mean distance between households. This increase leads to increased need for longer roads more infrastructure etc. This is the obvious. What is not obvious is the social impact of this.

As a kid I was able to walk and bike into school. The independence was great and I had lots of adventures on the way home with my friends on the way back from school. Only when we moved to a single family home further away from school I had to rely on the bus that only came once an hour and even more infrequent when its later in the afternoon, I saw my friends less.

This just a stupid anecdote of mine but I do see the pattern: people that live further away, see each other less and do less together. I can walk 5 min to the subway station and be at the front door of any circa 1.5m people in my city within 30 minutes. Not possible with detached housing. Subways only make sense in somewhat denser environments.

This all before talking about energy efficiency. Since I have other tenants left and right of me, I basically don't didn't even need to turn the heating on that much last winter.

Also I can walk to the corner of the city block and get fresh and warm bread from my favorite bakery. It's also right opposite of a very good pizza place. Not possible in suburbia.

If I wanna see some green and meet friends to play volleyball or a picnic I go to the public park instead of my private garden. The park is maintained by professional landscapers and gardeners, I wouldn't even have the time to care about my own garden.

I would suffer horribly in detached home suburbia and also have a far larger environmental footprint, so why do it?

[pandaman]

And I can sleep as long as I want without being awoken by my neighbors throwing stuff at the walls or dropping it on the floor, or slamming doors, or having an animated conversation in front of my door, or having an argument or a party in the courtyard or any other nuisance that people create for each other when living in multi-family buildings. No subway can replace this.