Why? High rises are very expensive to build
lolno
Actually, once you go above twenty stories or so they
do become disproportionately expensive. But your garden variety six-story apartment building, naw, that's not expensive.
Anyway, it's really
really silly to say that there's nothing in between Manhattan-style density and automobile-oriented suburbs. I think that people should be able to build Manhattans if they want, but there is a whole range of options that are less dense than that but also sufficiently dense to support public transit and a vibrant urban streetscape. The break-point for when people will switch away from cars is somewhere on the order of seven to ten dwellings an acre, which is a good deal less than Manhattan. "Streetcar suburbs" are pretty great, and I suspect that the real action going forward ought to be adaptive reuse and infill in our suburbs (and more suburban parts of cities) to reach the sort of densities necessary to support transit, not the Manhattanization of current urban centers. But it's going to take a while. It took many decades of building for car culture to get us where we are now, fixing those problems ain't gonna happen overnight.
As for the OP, I do in fact live suggestions #2 and #3; no car, 1-BR for two people, no problem. I understand that not everyone has the ability to go car-free, but almost everyone can cut back, and I do certainly hope (and have reason to believe this is not a hope in vain) that, going forward, more people will
want to go car-free. #1... not so much. I will be saddled with mounds of expensive college debt until the day I die, oh well.
