This is certainly not the case with some of the herding / working dog breeds (GSD, Malinois etc) - it is borderline cruel keeping them in an apartment in some cases, and dangerous in others.
I lived with a presa canario for a year in an apartment (roommates dog) - it was not a good situation for the dog or anyone else. After I moved out, I learned the dog attacked someone and was euthanized.
100%, I live in a city high rise. I see too many anxious dogs in that category that are "toys" to the owner and do not get sufficient exercise and mental stimulation. I love the beligan malinois breed but realize I have a lifestyle today that prevents me from owning one. Its similar to fish and aquarium sizes in many ways.
My partner does several dog-sports, and it seems that if you have on avg 30-90m training a day over the week, most of the day your dogs will just be happily tired and lounge around and sleep.
Or if she has more lenient training shedule, we do take them to run around in a field just outside of city like every two days.
The misconception is, that if you give a working dog big enough yard next to your house, it will be happy, but in reality you still need to train and work with it. If I were to exagerate, this kind of psychological neglect too can be borderline cruel and sometimes dangerous.
The bad thing is, even the owners might not realize. I heard several stories along the lines of "Our bordercolie is well fed, and well behaved, and has access to run around in a large garden, and take her with us every weekend on a hike, and then bites our friends child into her leg when the she tried to run away?" ... well, yeah, I am not surprised that a shepherd dog that isn't well trained and never worked would do something stupid like that.
My point probably is, that even in the sad story of the hard-to-manage presa canario, yeah, having it in an appartment didn§t make things easier, but I wouldn't see it as the primary problem.
I would heavily caution people to deeply consider what owning high-drive and super-reactive dogs actually means in day-to-day life. Dogs with these temperaments do have wonderful (and fun) qualities but simply require specialized environments and handling.
I don't think this is true. You can have a husky in a flat, but have to go for a run every morning.
I have a German Shepard. She goes for 3 walks a day and a lot of weekend trips. The flat is just a kennel.
I also wonder: doesn’t the genetic diversity between different breeds help account with defeating illness? What I mean is that if some sort of disease pops up it might kill a % of breeds, but another % might survive because, well, they’re a different breed with a trait that helped defeat that disease.
Us humans on the other hand have stopped evolving and are quite genetically the same (much more similar than dogs). So from that perspective I wonder whether a disease would be much more dangerous for us & whether actual breeding might be good overall for their species.
Of course inbreeding is a separate issue that hurts the life of the individual. But our apparent need to want different kind of dogs might actually end up saving their species in a doomsday scenario.