If the island were 100 times larger, the houses would take 1% of the land area, leaving 99%. The apartment complex would take up .04%, leaving 99.96%, which isn’t much of an improvement. The proportions of our planet are much closer to my scenario than this made up island. That’s a reason why we might not “prefer apartments in our own town.”
There are good reasons you might want density, this just isn’t one of them.
When you want to feel special but not enough to go to the effort of using FreeBSD