In the middle incomes of the more developed nations, urban people mostly rent and live by the rules of their landlords, or they buy and live by the very restrictive and expensive rules of homeowners associations or co-ops. It's a rather dull world when people are unable to modify their own living spaces and everyone but a single narrow class of employed people are excluded from the community.
We know that great ugly, repetitive publicly owned housing blocks don't work and often become hotbeds for crime and vandalism, but we also know large numbers of people are going to have trouble living in spaces they don't control, and maybe for related reasons, they will never enjoy regular employment, not until our society establishes some kind of minimum income with jobs accommodating of physical and mental disabilities, and more generous welfare and pension benefits.
If a person isn't working, or is retired without an adequate pension, it's usually not because they are lazy, it's because the economy is rotten, or they are members of a group discriminated against, or they are (or have been) unemployable in any ordinary way.
I try to imagine high density low energy urban housing where people own their living space, have a high degree of autonomy about what they do with that space, limited only by the concerns of public safety.
Welcome to the city, here's your big space. Water comes out this pipe, wastewater goes down this pipe, the sun shines in here. Any existing walls, ceilings and floors are near fireproof and built to last centuries. Public transportation is nearby. Have at it, this space is all yours.
It would be the more comfortable man-made equivalent of shelters the first wandering humans encountered, but without any cave bears to evict.
I've lived in worse places.
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