housing they actually want to live in, detached homes with yards and communities, not shoebox condos in a sea of other anonymous humans.

What does "false consensus" mean?

I love this fantasy that a yard and detached garage is somehow an entitlement if you want a good life. The two do not relate.

Small towns and villages need a renaissance, and unlike many places we have the the luxury of having more than enough land

Remember that every inch of land in this country is valuable for housing, infrastructure, business, farming and - most importantly in this climate - wild space.

It's a fallacy that bungalow jungles are cost-effective, space-effective, environmentally positive or even sane. Detroit showed it graphically, but absolutely no light-residential area can fully fund its long infrastructure runs on the paltry tax it provides. It's a net loss for the city, which needs to raise taxes or cut more services...or declare some blocks dead.

If two adjacent bungalows share a fence and one of them gets a new border Collie barking all night, you will have a war! We don't have that here, as we found when we shared a wall with a family and a new barky border Collie. We heard only the hallway apologies of our neighbour for no disturbance at all. They're very nice and the dog is adorable and smart.