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Originally Posted by ardecila
the ideal of the single-family house with a big yard is so deeply ingrained in the culture, people are conditioned to want that even when a different kind of home is objectively a better fit for their needs. Also, our cities now sprawl so much that developers can't find big sites within 45-60 minutes drive of the core city. You simply can't build anything on the scale of Greenbelt, MD anymore in most cities without it being remote and inaccessible. I do see some developers experimenting with cottage courts, though, which are a better solution for small infill sites.
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"Objectively better" according to whom? Maybe people want this type of housing becuase they just do. As it happens, I grew up not too far from Greenbelt, MD and nobody I ever met thought of it as any sort of paradise.
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I was describing New Urbanist communities like Seaside or Celebration today, not suburban neighborhoods in the past. These New Urbanist developments address some of the problems of typical American suburbia, but many people find the culture to be creepy for valid reasons.
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This stuff could well be the same sort of utopianist dream that has failed before. Celebration, which at one point I also lived fairly near, had a positive reputation mainly because Disney builds high quality Potemkin villages. It is the Cinderella's Castle of tract housing.