We have a yard with trees in a walkable area near mass transit, parks and open space.
A few years ago anyway this sort of place was easy to find, but expensive in many fairly urban East Bay Communities. I lived on North Campus side in Berkeley. I worked downtown Berkeley on Shattuck Street. It was a 15 minute walk, down a typical leafy, pleasant Berkeley street..My building was a home converted into a 5 plex. We often gathered in the evening for drinks in the back yard.
I don't get all the worry about no trees, too much concrete, the horrors of someone living on the other side of a wall. 2 blocks from where I live there are nice, well designed town homes with decent light on all 4 sides. They have 2 downsides. They cost plenty, like $1mm and up. Also, you have to be young to handle all the up and down. Aging in place would take some luck.
Many US cities everywhere except the bombed out shotgun house districts in the poor parts of eastern US cities have nice, very pleasant neighborhoods. They just tend to cost a lot.
I think the majority here favor suburbs, and luckily this is an area where many of us still have choice. But I'm like Greenspun, give me the city. Not an ugly, frightening South Bronx version, but one of the many nice central city neighborhoods all over America. Likely none of them are cheap now, but as other posters have said, that isn't important except to decide whether you can handle the cost. I have friends who raised their families in the 80s in the same Seattle neighborhood where I am living now. Looking back, they didn't miss anything that I got by moving out for that phase of my life. Today however it would be hard for most people to afford the large 1920s single family homes that they occupied.
Today I had to do a lot of little errands that most places would have taken me multiple trips to Lowes, etc.etc. But I got 12,000 steps and 32 floors, just pleasantly walking around in a 6x10 block area. I never have to eat fast food or pay for a meal that I am not looking forward to enjoying because I have to stack car-trips to avoid more miles. I just walk home and eat. Today I also walked 2 blocks to a little park and did some sunbathing. And cities bigger than Seattle just add more social and cultural features, for more money but no important deletions from quality of life.
The more I think about this, the more I think the issue is money, whether you want to live somewhere where you own the whole mountain top, or in an attractive lively neighborhood in a central city.
Ha