These remind me of the post-1906 earthquake shacks](https://sf.curbed.com/2017/4/18/15333168/sf-quake-shack-houses-camps). Better built attached housing would likely let people live better at a similar, if they could manage to agree on reasonable rules about living just a bit closer.
Just build a good, thick wall. If you can hear your neighbor through the wall, your house is shit
Cool that you had the privilege. That, or you built your own apartment complex?
That would have to be an extremely thick wall for some of the neighbors I’ve had.
Yes, it should be at least a foot of concrete. Or, more environmentally friendly, a foot of compressed earth.
But lots of places just do wood stick frame and that’s fucking terrible between two different units.
I’m not sure that’s enough concrete to drown out neighbors I’ve had. I’ve lived in buildings with about that much concrete between apartments but I’d still hear the bass of music at 3 AM.
It was probably coming out of a window
You better hope that wall can keep out the bed bugs.
The most effective wall you can build is a concrete block wall/insulated air gap/concrete block wall. It seems like overkill but this is the type of construction that cinemas have between individual theaters. The only way to get more isolation (aka the “good, thick wall”) is to decouple the walls, and at that point you’re at separate structures anyway which adds the advantages of fire breaks and not having to have a legal entity governing common components like that roof.