I grew up in a city of mostly rowhomes and I love them. Plan on buying one one day.
You still get walk-ability, sense of community and good population density (not as good as a high-rise but still good), but also more privacy, and the space is more conducive to raising a family than an apartment. Also they’re cute as fuck and people can paint them different colors and have cool little gardens on their porches and stuff.
I think there’s a difference between the vintage homes in the photo above and the, frankly, kind of crappy townhouses they’re building now.
Portland has what they call an “Urban Growth Boundary”, beyond that point, the city can’t expand. So the way you build more housing is you tear out a single family home, and build these:
https://cdn.listingphotos.sierrastatic.com/pics2x/v1693008795/53/53_23042487_01.jpg
So now, you have a structure that’s just as crappy as apartments, with no parking, and a bonus of being unaffordable. These are $850K per unit.
As long as there’s good public transport, the lack of parking is a positive. We should have less parking spaces.