I fall into this boat. I lived abroad for many years, did the digital nomad thing, have been really all over the world. I love walkability and have looked for it here in the US as a driving basis for housing selection. All that said, I absolutely will not share walls with someone else. I used to work nights, and sleep in the day, and I'm still a night owl. It is untenable to me to have to deal with complaints because I am watching Netflix at 9:30PM, or to have to have any shared systems which I am now limited away from being able to fix myself.

On the flipside, I don't want a huge place to live, so I am actively trying to find (or build) a small (less than 1800sqft) narrow (3 stories, like a detached townhouse) house that is extremely ecological (passive house standards) in a walkable area. When I considered permanently moving to Europe, places like this were actually not horribly uncommon, although they weren't as common as apartment blocks. In the US, places like this are near impossible to find because most houses are built by "production builders" who optimize for the largest square footage possible on a lot space allowed by local code to increase selling price, and do it as the lowest cost (meets code, maybe, basically same as getting a C grade).