It seems bad appartments are leading entire generations into thinking all appartments have to be terrible, last-resort options. I'm renting a recently renovated appartment , and while it's not perfect, the sound isolation is so good, that my roommate can play games with voice chat and I can sleep in the next room. Only a ~5cm wall separates our rooms.

I think a future with comfortable, large, isolated apartments is possible, and even such "fancy" apartments are going to be cheaper than full houses, if there are enough of them.

Apartment need not suck.

    * Noise is an easily solvable problem, with insulation.
    * Proper ducts and exhausts can handle smells/smoke.
    * high rents means there is a demand but not enough supply. 
    * car parking can be in basement, easily accessible.

Benefits of a high quality apartment.

   * easy to secure/gate. 
   * grocery, pharmacy,...  are < 5 min walk. 
   * a large pool, 2 hectare park inside the society. 
   * multiple badminton, tennis, basketball courts inside the society. 
   * above all allow my 7 year old to go for lot of activities on his own or with friends.

Your supposed easily solved problems run up against cost or local building codes. Apartments tend to suck because builders put the bare minimum amount of work/cost necessary to get a building up to code. They have shit insulation because it's cheap but up to code. They have bad ducting and poor ventilation because it's cheap but up to code. The building codes are generated more from danger avoidance and other liability more than occupant comfort or efficiency.

Suburban parts of cities often aren't zoned for high density housing because the NIMBYs don't want them near their detached homes. When everyone sees a house as an investment there's no incentive for them to increase housing in their city.

They spec cheap insulation and whatnot because after every party that they're legally required to do business (a dozen item long list of licensed trades and government entities) with gets their pound of flesh that's all there's money left for.

So the poor builder is being gutted by regulations and paying licensed labor? If not for those obscene costs they would use better more expensive materials?

How can you possibly believe such a thing? That is just an outright foolish assertion. The labor cost to build something to code is the same regardless of the quality of materials. Builders skimp on materials to pad their margins. Even if they used cheaper unlicensed labor there's no impetus to use more expensive materials.

If Brad the electrician wants to benefit from artificial barriers to entry that keep his job out of reach of Jose that raises the cost floor of a building. Now apply the same effect for every trade. Now add in the cost of dealing with obstinate government. Suddenly there's no money left to spruce up the building beyond the bare minimum and still come out the other side with an end result within the scope of "what the market will bear".

Doesn't have to be an apartment. Just has to be a house without a 40ft setback on a giant lot. I live on the right side of a duplex and there's plenty of density to support a grocery store in walking distance.

I was thinking house/condo but I've lived in apartments for most of my adult life and would have purchased several of them if I had the cash at the time.

They were not noise, in fact in one I only ever heard my neighbors one time in three years of living there, they were typically pretty spacious, rent didnt fluctuate that greatly, I didnt need/have a car most of the time but there was lots of street parking, and I don't have a great sense of smell but oders were never an issue.

Nice apartments exist. You just pay about the same as you would for them as you would on a mortgage.

Well said, and matches my experience nicely.