Why I dislike any kind of housing that gets city-level density: I don't like sharing a wall of my dwelling with others. I don't like hearing people easily through my walls. The suburban sprawl grants that.
ETA: To be fair, the architect/contractor/developer going for the cheap option is pretty common. Especially when it comes to something no one can see like insulation inside walls.
I'm in an older (~1930) building in Belltown and have only heard my neighbor above me one time (I think a chair fell over or something). Honestly, the biggest source of noise for me is outside in the summer months when I leave the windows open.
It's not a really old property - ~200 year old townhouse converted to flats about 120 years ago.
Walls are roughly 1m thick sandstone.
I live in one of the older apartment buildings in SF, built in 1907. (Not much exists older than that, for... reasons) I can tell whether my upstairs neighbor drops a quarter or a dime, and I am regularly woken up by the next door neighbor's iPhone alarm clock. The whole building shakes slightly whenever a Bart train (which is pretty far underground) goes by.
Walls are roughly 1cm thick plywood, apparently. And yet it still costs a fortune!
I live in a 100 year old brick tenement in Brooklyn, though, and hear very little of our neighbors myself— occasional creaking floorboards, and some sounds from the staircase near the front doors, but that's about it.
Before I was 10 I lived in an urban area. It was pretty much exactly this. After that we moved to an ultra-rural area. When I was old enough I swore I would move back and I did, but within a couple years realized that there are lots of downsides exactly as you describe here. I'd add that close proximity to near constant violence is also a problem in many urban areas.
I finally left when my downstairs neighbor was violently stabbed in his own apartment.
This was in one of the low-crime areas.