Suburbs and detached houses are available in Europe as well, often with good public transport access (although there are plenty where you need a bicycle to get to a train station).
It is just apartments are much cheaper and you can often not have a car if you live in an apartment.
Suburbs are cheap where? On what salary? Munich suburbs are equally unaffordable to buy something on a Munich wage, unless you're talking about buying in the boonies where you need to drive everywhere but that's no longer the suburbs but a whole different city/village, or you're a high roller at a FAANG, but that excludes 95% of working class people.
My ex originally is from there and I used to work there and my colleagues from the Texas office had more purchasing power at local real-estate than their counterparts from the Munich office.
It is just apartments are much cheaper and you can often not have a car if you live in an apartment.