Yeah, I agree that there's too much focus on highrises as a fix our housing supply. The units you get by replacing a block of detached homes with mid-rise apartments add up fast.
Side-note: Learning about one-plus-fives was one of those "learning to see the lines of code in the Matrix" moments. They're everywhere. In my experience, for all their shine and gloss, most of them kind of suck. But kinda crappy housing is better than no housing.
Another issue is that a lot of the mid-rise apartments are built in complexes (at least in the US) that segregate the apartment from the rest of the city. You get density but no community. There’s no sense of place.
The most dystopian version of this I've seen if my friend's old apartment outside San Diego. It was just a strip of land between two freeways with an exit, a McDonald's, Starbucks, and Food 4 Less. And the apartment complex. And you had to cross the single light on the strip of street between offramp and onramp to get to the latter two.
Side-note: Learning about one-plus-fives was one of those "learning to see the lines of code in the Matrix" moments. They're everywhere. In my experience, for all their shine and gloss, most of them kind of suck. But kinda crappy housing is better than no housing.