i know what you mean. maybe i'm not clever enough to see the logic, but i've started to believe the developers are just stuck, mentally, and cannot conceptualize anything except minor tweaks to the post-war suburban explosion. or maybe, as Big Rich Dolts living in single family homes on big lots with drivers and cars, they have to believe that's how everyone wants to live, so they create smaller versions of it for us to aspire to.

there might also be something (maybe this isn't true), but the investment cost of builders for small, single family homes, is less than like 3-5 story, mixed use higher density, in terms of material and build quality. obviously, that is changing with the relaxation of building standards to let 5 over 1s exist, and i'll be damned if i am not seeing tons of those pop up in a short period of time. but, again, those are like cheap/shitty apartments. i think builders can't even conceptualize or (maybe) are risk avoidant about building high quality dense housing, because why do that when you can balloon frame a bunch of shitty mcmansions on the relatively cheap.