Fwiw, that's my non-American impression of North American suburban homes everywhere (as far as I've seen, largely TV/film of course) - y'all say scathing things about terraced houses in Europe, but then your own seem for the most part detached only as a technicality.

(And probably it is mostly about making legal and construction matters easier? No party wall; if you want to tear it down and put a new one up you can do so without disturbing the neighbours' property, etc.)

We have townhomes that share walls as well. My wife wasn’t a fan although I loved one place like that. It’s mostly preference going on.

I know, it just seems like preference is much stronger against them / there are fewer of them in NA. Maybe because if you build your houses with a timber frame you need an air gap not to heat the neighbours? Also I suppose the cost saving of constructing like that is a lot less than with brick or even breeze blocks.

I would say 25% of the townhomes here in Ballard are row homes that share walls, the rest are townhomes with footpath sized spacing between them. It isn’t a matter of heat here in Seattle, heat pumps are efficient and insulation between homes is pretty good.

Besides cost savings, you can fit more in if you don’t have those foot paths between, but the market isn’t into it.

Sorry, 'heat' was a typo for 'hear' - air gap not to hear the neighbours, I wasn't worrying about cheap neighbours sapping up your heat, ha. (Although anecdotally, that can be huge for mid-storey flat/apartments, not completely stupid.)

In Southern China, flats built as early as just 10 years ago lack indoor heating and reasonable insulation. So even if you want to heat your apartment with a space heater, you aren’t going to get very far. The coldest 5C I ever experienced.

Noise is an issue. In particular the one I really wanted to buy overlooking the Ballard locks, we suspected that the unit next to us was a party airBnB.

If a home does not have a shared wall, it is not a townhome.

There regional variations in how the word is used. In my region, a townhome is defined via other criteria.