I don't want a back yard. What I want is the noise isolation and the feeling of safety and personal space. I also like having the ability to use that space for personal projects if I want to.

I have seen condos and other urban spaces that are well-built enough to provide the same benefits that I see from a back yard. But they're very expensive.

My basic point is that people sometimes forget what they really want, and instead focus on something that has given them those benefits.

Busses work perfectly well for suburban neighbourhoods with back yards. With 1000m² each, you can place more than 250 lots around a bus stop, so that no one will have to walk more than 500m. With average families of four, that's a thousand potential passengers. Not enough for a metro station, but more than enough for a bus service every 10-20 minutes to get to the next train station.

What also works well: Build a few 3 story apartment buildings, a supermarket, a few small stores, a school, a kindergarten and a pub around a train station. Build the single family homes around that infrastructure and you have the perfect place for almost everyone. Families can live in the outer area, when the kids get older they can move out into the apartments and still be around. When they start their own family they move back into the garden homes and the grandparents who get too old to work their gardens can move to the apartments. And all that within 15 minutes walking distance of a train station.

I wouldn't mind living in an apartment building, so long as it's equally co-owned by the people who live in it, and by nobody who doesn't. And that it has a green space on the property for recreation and a community garden.

I don't want a backyard, I want a park within walking distance.

I don't want an expensive hunk of steel and plastic, I want a train that picks up every ten minutes.

I know a large number of people who feel the same way. But none of them have billions of dollars to lobby my mayor or governor or President. Hell, even when we do get a bit of outright bribery to bend things our way, a single petty asshole can foul the whole project.

I have both (not so much on the train front unfortunately).