Believe it or not, I don't want a apartment my entire life, I want a place that is mine without silly rules like you can't nail up a picture. I'd also like to do things with the other rooms, like a home theater, welding shit in the garage, etc.
Living in an apartment isn't
that bad, it's what I've done most of my life. As long as you're in a nice area, have a terrace/balcony and a garage, and your building has a nice garden, it's actually very comfy. You do still want a car, since buying groceries is an annoying chore and you can drive to a good store to get actual produce instead of picking through spoiled factory tomatoes at the corner store, but a good apartment is comfortable, minimal maintenance, and makes it very easy to have a night life.
My apartment has three bedrooms, so I use one as the actual bedroom (one wall has a huge window, lovely view over the park from the bed), the tiny one as an office, and the medium one as a home theatre. I knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the common room and put up a bar instead, and then had the common room as a dining room with bookshelves and a chaise. Terrace has some patio furniture and an inflatable spa bath. It's a lovely apartment. Next to the garage is a workshop type area, you absolutely could weld in there if you wanted to. The basement storage is right next to it, it wouldn't be a lot of work to carry your welding gas and whatever over there. Yeah I love living in the countryside now, but city life isn't necessarily bad, it's just that these people insist on living it in an awful manner. You absolutely can hang up a picture if you want to, I've even hired contractors to knock down a wall. It's your apartment, you can do with it as you like.
I've always lived in good neighbourhoods, but even so you can't leave your bicycle outside and not expect it to be gone. I've never owned (and actively used) a bicycle for longer than a week. The only way it stays yours is if you bring it indoors, which is also why your smelly bicyclist coworkers always use carbon fibre competition bikes; it's because they're light enough to carry into the office. Not that they'd ever admit that. I've commuted with an escooter, it's actually alright. It's just nice to have a car for when it's raining, or snowing, or windy, or you just don't feel like risking your life crossing the tram tracks today.