More city planners should take a walk in heavy fog. Not that I have some scathing opinion about apartment density, but I do think it’s compelling to view the buildings as shapeless dwelling places for squares of light.
Once, when I was walking by the public library, I heard this conversation like it was crystal clear, except that none of the words were intelligible (not that those two things are mutually exclusive). That day was gorgeous, not foggy, and the voices came from eight stories up or so where a person was swinging one leg out over the street. They chatted with someone inside. I used to think that was just the coolest. (I still do, but recently I’ve found high places extremely disorienting.)
However you feel with respect to eighth-story windows and formless, spiny structures in the fog, maybe there’s something to be taken from the inside-outness of windows in apartment buildings.