Ah that's a bit of a false dichotomy though. In between a rustic rural house on several acres down a dirt unpaved road unsuitable for bicycles, and a tiny, loud, one-bedroom downtown apartment condo in a highrise, or worse - one bedroom in a shared flat, in a superurban locale,
say Hong Kong, right above the nightlife or red light district, trying to raise a family of three or four; somewhere between the two extremes is a livable medium. Maybe a three-bedroom condo with a shared yard and pool raise a family in. A nestled away cute 2-bedroom cottage with a tiny yard at the edge of the city, but still within subway distance.
Now, I'll concede that most cities in the US aren't designed this way. I'll go further and say that most cities in the US lack the density to deserve being called cities, they're
just large swaths of adjacent suburbia with a tiny downtown district that most people drive to in order to access, which has huge implications on traffic and parking.
What recent changes in society has enabled us to see is just how much we were sold a crock of shit while on our way to buying 5-bedroom McMansions with expansive yards for hosting dinner parties. If the cost is a one hour each way commute, people are starting to see it's not actually worth it.
So I agree/you're right - real estate prices have to fall dramatically in order for things to be accessible to the non-rich households who aren't on dual tech worker salaries, and who can't afford a reasonably sized (2+ bedroom) urban apartment. But for better or worse, HN skews affluent, so there are undoubtedly readers here able to afford a 4-bedroom apartment in one of the nicer neighborhoods of San Francisco where you'd want to raise a family. Pretending otherwise does no body any favors. The only question is how do we get from where we are today, which is that it's unaffordable to all but the upper-middle and upper class, to a place where is affordable on a single wage earners salary? The only answer to that is to build more housing. Stopgap measures like rent control don't work. It may be anathema to some, but part of that may include the government stepping in to make that happen.
Ebikes allow us to get from here to there, as an ebike allows a slightly more sprawling city design, due to the added range enabled by an ebike vs walking+non-existent public transportation, which means we can get a lot of mileage by repainting and modifying existing roads to add bike-safe infrastructure without ripping out and replacing buildings, which is basically impossible.