I used to live in American suburbia; it was full of vagrants. I had to call the police on several occasions.
> your own little bit of green space
Meh. I used to loath cutting the grass. Now I'm in quick walking distance to several large very green parks.
> But it's more expensive
Is it really vs the costs of maintaining a single-family home and having to own and maintain a vehicle(s) for commuting?
> louder, more polluted
The city I live in now is cleaner than the suburb that I lived in (trash cleanup is more frequent) and generally quieter.
Full disclosure: I'm living in a European city (vs. an American city)
I've never seen a vagrant within several miles of my neighborhood. It would be such a terrible place to be vagrant, with a relatively low population density and mediocre public transit. There's a reason they don't hang out in my neighborhood, they do much better in the city.
> I used to loath cutting the grass.
Yeah, I'm not a fan either. However, I pay someone about 1/8th of the HOA fee for the place in the city to have my yard kept tidy for me.
> Is it really vs the costs of maintaining a single-family home and having to own and maintain a vehicle(s) for commuting?
I don't drive a particularly expensive car, and my house is still pretty new so just the HOA fee alone for the place in the city is quite a lot more expensive.
> The city I live in now is cleaner than the suburb that I lived in (trash cleanup is more frequent) and generally quieter.
I'm guessing you lived in a very different sort of suburb than I do, based on how you describe it. I live in a residential area of a very small city ("oldest west of the Rockies" is our only real claim to fame) on the edge of a mid-size metro in a liberal state. It's very clean, low traffic, there are several parks in easy walking distance (not just my yard ;-)), the school my kids go to is about a hundred yards away, etc. I'd have to pay twice as much for half as much if I wanted to live in the city, and I'd be irritated all the time by noisy people. Maybe I am a little antisocial ;-).
It's really not an easy issue. It seems like objectively there are benefits to high density. But it's more expensive (to individuals, if not society as a whole), louder, more polluted, etc. It's easy to understand why plenty of people want to live in their own little castle, and it's also easy to understand why they would vote to preserve the status quo.