House of dreams

Many people in Europe dream of living in a house. Most people in the USA do. After living in both worlds for a while, I think I understand why.
In cities in Europe (from which I know mostly Czech Republic, but it is similar elsewhere as far as I can tell from traveling around), there is a plenty of public spaces. The forests and hills in the countryside are mostly open to public (not true in UK, for example) and there is a plenty of historical places to visit.
In Czech Republic in particular, I takes me 20 minutes on bike to get to a forest, where there are no cars, no people and basically no rules (no signs every 20 meters). It takes an hour by train to get basically to anywhere around Prague, with trails for hiking everywhere. There are historical things to see (castles, churches,...), hills to climb, just things to do. If I need to get out of the city, I does not take much effort. Of course, since there is so many of them, the density of people is low. If you have one (Central) Park in the City (there are more, but you get the point), no surprise it is full of people. Since there is so many of them, there does not need to be special rules (more people, more rubish) and some of the people in Europe have to habit to take their trash with them, not to drop on the ground, which limits the need for the rules.
Thus, the need to have your own private place is not nearly as strong. Everybody would prefer to own a house, because you don't need to think about neighbors, it is even closer to the nature, air is cleaner and it is less hot in the summer. But you don't need the house as a place where you spend most of the time because there is nowhere else to go.
In the US, it is rather depressing if you don't have a house. There are no places to go - most places are private, only parks are accessible and there is plenty of people and rules. You want to have your own place without any rules, where you can hang out outside.
Of course, there is more space in the US, which makes it possible for everyone to live in a house, and people are richer so they can afford the house (mostly, of course not in NY). Since so many people are able to afford a house, almost nobody lives in an apartment. In Czech Republic, most people do (about 2/3, if I can remember correctly).
The consequences of this difference are enormous. First, you cannot provide public transportation for low density areas at reasonable costs. Which means everybody needs a car, which means you need plenty of roads. Even poor people need cars because they cannot get to work otherwise.
You need car to visit public offices, to shop even at a grocery store (till I was 25, I never went to a grocery store by car and I was shopping for my family till I was in fifth grade). Car is a luxury in Czech Republic, used over the weekends to get out of the city. It is a pure necessity in California.
Low population density makes other things more expensive and harder to do - elections, services (like cable TV, internet connection, garbage collection and recycling), mobile phones. It makes it much harder for police and firedepartment to cover large areas.

After this experience, I will still dream about my house. But I know that the fact that I (and the rest of the citizens of Czech Republic) spend 2/3 of our lives in apartments is not such a bad thing.