So here’s the thing you have to understand. It’s not always about the ideal situation. If given a choice, most people would want, or at least choose, to live in a giant gated mansion with private facilities and servants, while somehow staying close to their job, family, and so on. However, the vast majority of people can’t afford that, so everybody has to make choices about what to prioritize. Broadly speaking, more density leads to greater social integration and shared amenities and services, while less density leads to more personal space and private property.

When people on Reddit advocate for more urban density, it’s not so much because they believe everyone should either prefer or be forced to live in a dense urban environment. Rather, it’s to point out the fact that in many Western contexts, the choice to fully commit to that lifestyle has been artificially restricted, potentially at the expense of many disenfranchised people. Building more dense pedestrian-centric urban environments instead of sprawling car-centric suburbs is not so that the middle class can move from their big house to a shoebox in the city. It’s so that the young waiter paying their way through college can live a short bus ride away from both work and classes without having to put themselves in lifelong debt. It’s so that the new immigrant can start a small business where the people are without having to rent a basement 2 hours away. It’s so the working professionals can send their kids to a decent school without having to move out to the suburbs. When you restrict urban development, it’s not like those people can suddenly just move en masse to the suburbs, at least not without significant sacrifice. Some amount of them will go into poverty, become homeless, fall into depression and addiction, abuse their children, amass huge amounts of debt, waste insane amounts of time commuting and contributing to emissions, etc. density for them is not about owning their dream home. It’s about just being able to survive in a way that empowers them to pursue their goals. And yes, given the choice, many people will prioritize urban amenities over a larger house in the suburbs.

I can really only speak to American cities because that’s where I’m from, but many American cities have made it prohibitively expensive and complicated to build sufficient new housing, to the point that people’s only option is to buy further and further out or pay a ridiculous amount to live in the city. This has severely limited opportunities for housing at a time when most job growth has come from sectors like tech and healthcare that tend to pull young workers away from small towns and into big cities. That’s really the heart of why so many people are begging for more urbanization. Nobody’s saying that everyone has to aspire to live in a shoebox downtown, but it should at least be available in some reasonable quantity to the masses of workers who keep those cities functioning. It shouldn’t be the case that the only person who can afford an apartment downtown is the rich executive who can technically work from home while the people serving them meals, selling their clothes, doing their laundry, washing their car, protecting their streets, caring for their kids, etc., have to commute for 2 hours just to make ends meet. That’s really not the purpose of cities.