Basically every square inch of Earth has effectively been spoken for already save for the oceans, but nation states will still happily invent reasons why they actually control the plot you’ve put your city on (“some tiny island in the vicinity is under ours, thus so is your city!”) or maybe just won’t bother with pretext at all and threaten military action unless you comply.
All that becomes much less practical in space, and the further out you go the less likely it is that Earth based powers will bother you (especially if we never invent the efficient significant-fraction-of-light-speed engines that enable the plot of The Expanse).
Now of course going out there introduces all sorts of other problems, but existing power interference is not among them.
Of course, that can happen to some off-world settlement that took generations to build too, but it’s not a given and your chances of retaining sovereignty are much better.