I grew up in "walkable residential neighborhoods with cafes/restaurants/shops where neighbors interact" outside the US. Thank you, but no thank you. Crowded, nosy judgemental people, noisy and small properties with constant fights with neighbors.
You're projecting you personal tastes onto others and thinking everybody else is getting a bad deal.
You ran right past the GP's statement too:
> yet with terrible distribution
applies to the quality of a suburb too. Obviously. You wouldn't catch me dead in a Texas suburb or Florida suburb.
My argument is that not even nice dense neighborhoods are that nice compared to nice suburbia.
It's a matter of the person's life values and I believe the majority wouldn't necessarily pick the nice dense neighborhoods over nice suburbia. Also, I'd pick bad suburbia over bad inner cities.