When you argue for housing reform to legalize denser development in our cities, you quickly learn that some people hate density. Like, really hate density, with visceral disgust and contempt for any development pattern that involves buildings being tall or close together.
Density is a mixed bag - on the one hand it means your hit critical mass for local services to be viable faster (the good), but you are also usually trapped in a leasehold when you buy (the very bad). You do get a lot of noise in dense houses, and given the “cheapest viable” philosophy that isn’t going away - it also means you have to be more mindful of your own noise.
Overall, I don’t enjoy it, but it beats driving to work every day.
Americans’ problems with density can be summed up by: shit construction with hollow walls, neoliberal financialization and shit infrastructure.
So basically all political issues, and nothing to do with density. But the ideology of antisocial subarbanism is still very strong, so people are a bit incapable of actually understanding the material reality of the situation and just reduce it to urban = bad.
A lot of them also assume an urban area is going to be some depressing parking lot filled asphalt wasteland with lots of traffic noise (to be fair that is likely all they’ve experienced), but urban areas do not have to be like that. Buildings can have human scale details instead of impossing sheets of concrete and glass. We can take some space away from cars and plant trees along the streets. We can regulate and enforce excessive vehicle noise, move high speed traffic away from urban centers and build accessible transit.