My question to. But New York City seems to still get a ton of revenue and all they have are row homes and apartments.
Someone owns those buildings, and they pay taxes on them.
As more and more adults forego children, they see no point in paying property taxes (in the NYC metro area, they are more than half your property taxes - and if you pay rent instead, you’re helping pay someone else’s property taxes); those people were already avoiding buying homes, so cities in particular have to farm out their breeding underclass to attach them to sugar-daddy taxpayers (renting or owning) to provide the services the cities can’t provide anymore (financially).
Over-55 communities, as well as multi-family buildings with small units, are the desired development for many municipalities today; they bring in $ without public school clients (the largest expense for most municipalities).