This is a colossal failure for humanity, primarily due to home ownership as an investment vehicle, plus regulatory capture pushed by the car companies and oil and gas companies.
There is no technical reason we can't have livable, quiet and spacious apartments, where multiple apartment buildings share a huge, enclosed backyard (almost park-like, even), a setup with tons of small shops, pharmacies, easy access to everything, etc.
Plus you can also have access to large parks, in a suburb you'd never have access to those, just your limited backyard.
Even nice apartments are pretty miserable places to live if you have multiple small children, or engage in hobbies or activities that require much equipment. Imagine coming home to your apartment with a muddy mountain bike. Do you haul it up to the 4th floor in the elevator and wash it in your shower? It's possible to make it work but living in a single-family home (or townhouse with attached garage) sure makes regular life a lot easier.
> Imagine coming home to your apartment with a muddy mountain bike. Do you haul it up to the 4th floor in the elevator and wash it in your shower?
We have the tech for this, we could have literal multi-bike sheds/parking garages and all that's needed is 1 (ONE) water source with a hose inside. As I said, failure on the part of our species :-)
In my city there are actually a few public bike washing stations, so the game plan in this case would be just to bike that way before coming home.
There is no technical reason we can't have livable, quiet and spacious apartments, where multiple apartment buildings share a huge, enclosed backyard (almost park-like, even), a setup with tons of small shops, pharmacies, easy access to everything, etc.
Plus you can also have access to large parks, in a suburb you'd never have access to those, just your limited backyard.
But most places will never have that...