I live in Chicago. I have 350sqft garage and a partially-finished conditioned 280sqft attic room that functions as a studio space. I have more "workshop" space than most of my friends in the suburbs who mostly just treat their garages as a storage space with a little workbench in the corner. My home is over a century old, although the garage is only 25 years old.

Now, can suburban homes offer you MORE space? Absolutely! And if I had the kind of hobbies that merited that additional space I'd probably want to live there. However, as someone who grew up in the suburbs, has friends in the suburbs, etc - the number of friends I have who actually use that space for enjoyment and not junk storage is literally just 1 guy who has a sweet CNC and metal working space in his garage and basement. Everyone else has a garage used for cars + storage and a basement rumpus room with maybe a tiny 8x8 workshop somewhere near the mechanicals (HVAC and Water heater)

Perhaps I’m simply not normal, and hence frustrated that someone suggested my desires are forced or taught.

I do tend to be the one neighbor out in the yard the most by an order of magnitude.

I also have a 60 acre rural property because even a quarter acre in the suburbs doesn’t give me enough space to play.

The thing is in the United States there's an abundance of properties and communities available that give you lots of personal living and working space. In fact, it's pretty much the default. The frustration is that there's a shrinking pool of available higher-density living spaces that are all astronomically priced because of high demand and low supply, and any attempt to grow this pool of higher density space is met with stiff opposition.

==Have you ever built a cedar strip canoe, or are you making wooden spoons==

No, I haven't built a cedar strip canoe (nice flex), but I do have the room in my 2.5 car garage if I wanted to. Partly because we only need one car in the city for a 4-person family (which is also part of the "cost" calculation). I could also use my basement, if I was inclined.

==It would cost double what I pay for me to live with 1/4 of the space in a city.==

This is impossible to say without knowing how much you pay and how much space you have.

It’s likely linked to my non-trivial ADHD that I need the space to work on whatever thing I go into a rabbit hole on any given year. Even in the suburbs I’ve had the fire department called; I probably would’ve been arrested had I been in a townhouse.

I moved from Brooklyn NYC to NJ suburbs and my 15 year mortgage on 4 bed 2 bath decent yard was about the same as a 1 bed 1 bath 3rd floor walk up that was pretty snug once you had two people and two cats.