I sympathize, but space is nice to have to oneself.
I live in the suburbs. It isn't beautiful but I don't care much. We have nice parks. If I want more space I have to move further away from my job. I can't afford to live in the city with the amenities I want. A different sort of city might open up new possibilities, but meanwhile people need some place to live.
[WS:] I think cost of living is only part of the story here. It explains why people are prevented from living in certain places (like DC or Manhattan, for example), but it does not explain why people choose to live in certain types of places, everything else being equal.
I think people are cognitively "programmed" (if that is an appropriate word here) to live in places of different population/spatial density, and feel miserable in places that do not match their cognitive "priors." Some people (like myself, for example) thrive in densely populated places, with a lot of people in close proximity, densely packed space with variety of structures, uses and functionalities, relatively quick pace of change, etc. - and feel miserable in lower density places. There are other people for whom the opposite is true (cf. research in proxemics http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/13.)
It is not that there is anything "wrong" with either kind of places, but that people's perceptions of- and preferences for - organization of space vary on a continuum between two polar extremes: claustrophobia and agoraphobia. I am not sure if the exact mechanism of that behavior is known to science, but I am pretty sure that there is more into it than mere learning. Studies of animal behavior show that it can be affected by the organization of space, co clearly there is more than simple S-R learning and adaptation involved here. But I do not think it is pure genetics either.
For example, both of my parents are definitely the "open space" types - they like the country side and dislike crowded, densely populated spaces, but I am the exact opposite. When I was a kid, I always had problems with their choice of where they spent their weekends and vacations, and I simply stopped going with them as soon as I was in a position to do so.
My dislike for suburban lifestyles has less to do with the qualities of that lifestyle itself - albeit I am concerned that this is not the most efficient use of space and resources - but with the fact that I simply feel miserable in this kind of space. What makes my experience even more miserable is the realization that our choices of space in which we live are severely constrained by government policies and local politics in both of which special interests (especially developers) call practically all the shots.
It is a double sense of alienation, if you will. One caused by living in a space in which you do not feel comfortable. The other one caused by disempowerment and lack of control of the policies that shape our environment.
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