Living in low rises is by no means not living around people. Nobody builds shophouses or townhouses in the boonies, to think that is to have a truly distorted view of the world.
The presence of high rises ultimately screws you in the end. Paris is cool (despite it being basically impossible to live there for real) because it's low-rise and cohesive. There is one big shiny eyesore of a plinth which has haunted the place since its construction. Sure, if there's a concentrated business community, a block approved for high rise development is going to be valuable to them, but it degrades the surrounding area.
We might be talking at cross purposes to some extend; Paris is not what I would call low rise, it's far more dense than Auckland is (and Auckland is low rise).
A continuous genuine low rise city like Auckland is a nightmare, and a hypothetical continuous high rise city (does one exist?) would be similar. Continuous mid rise like Paris, Barcelona etc is probably better than either, but having a good mix would improve things.
Did you mean: the sticks
Living in low rises is by no means not living around people. Nobody builds shophouses or townhouses in the boonies, to think that is to have a truly distorted view of the world.
The presence of high rises ultimately screws you in the end. Paris is cool (despite it being basically impossible to live there for real) because it's low-rise and cohesive. There is one big shiny eyesore of a plinth which has haunted the place since its construction. Sure, if there's a concentrated business community, a block approved for high rise development is going to be valuable to them, but it degrades the surrounding area.