Are Single-Family Homes Passe?

At Fast Company:

On the op-ed page of today’s New York Times, Gang and Fast Company’s own Greg Lindsay argue that if you want to revive the flagging residential real estate market, you have to offer alternatives to traditional single-family homes, which fail to accommodate the domestic needs of many Americans.
By “Americans” they mean predominantly immigrants, who’ve flocked to the suburbs in spades. They point to Cicero, Il., a Chicago suburb with a large Latino immigrant population and an astronomical foreclosure rate:

Most of Cicero’s housing is detached, single-family homes. But these are too expensive for many immigrants, so five or six families often squeeze into one of Cicero’s brick bungalows. This creates unstable financial situations, neighborhood tensions and falling real estate values.

Gang and Linsday suggest redesigning abandoned buildings, like Cicero’s old factories, to create flexible residential units so that “rather than force Cicero’s residents to contort themselves to fit the bungalows, their homes can expand or shrink to fit them.” They further suggest relaxing zoning laws--which often prohibit adaptive reuse--and embracing new financial mechanisms that ease the burden on homeowners.

I like the concept, but like changing our car-based way of life, this is going to be tough.  People love them some space, even if it is in a cookie-cutter subdivision in the middle of nowhere.  I do think greater urban density is a necessity in the future, but people will get dragged there kicking and screaming.