There’s nothing soulless about high density, it’s efficient, environmentally friendly and to your point allows and supports diversity in recreation and dining. It’s the inescapable future of human civilization, in a good way. Would you describe living in New York as soulless? It’s time to get over the dog/white picket fence/2.5 kids delusion.

It's a very logical connection: low density housing leads to low density commerce and transportation problems. See also: strip malls.

Soulless 50 story apartments are better than soulless cookie cutter detached homes, because at least with the former it‘s easier to escape total isolation. And of course it is better for the environment.

Neither option is humane. In both cases, the capitalist illness has destroyed any sense of community.

Nobody in big cities knows their neighbors. And very few people organize against poverty, against their bosses, landlords, and police abuse. They could have a good life if they did, but don't underestimate the capacity of an oppressive system to isolate people (because it's the only way it can survive).

I mean, the former Warsaw Pact states are also full of lots of "soulless" dense housing, just Communist-flavored.

You can have lots of housing, cheap housing, and quality housing, but never really all three. Vienna, which a lot of people like bringing up as an example of a friendly masss housing program, recorded flat or declining population every decade until 2000, and has still not recovered from its pre-WWI peak, which wasn't even very big at 2M people.

High density housing works in S'pore just because it's S'pore.

People respect the rules (otherwise they face consequences for asocial behaviour) and this makes the city function like a well oiled machine.

The same scheme wouldn't work in many Western cities, too many self-absorbed people thinking they're more important than their community.

> too many self-absorbed people thinking they're more important than their community.

If people in Singapore are more community minded, then why the need for the harsh enforcement? (You know, public whippings for putting your shoes on the wrong feet or whatever...)

It does work in the West you just need to enforce the rules. There are Western countries that do this well and there are ones that fail at enforcing these rules.

This is why I didn't write "all". I saw it working in Switzerland myself.