environment wise though bunching people up in cities seems the most efficient thing to do.
on edit: clarified what was quote and what my response.
Where? SF and Manhattan are surrounded by water on 3 sides. Seattle has water on 2 sides. Other areas: LA, Boston, Miami, Portland, Denver, Chicago, have similar geographic limitations.
If you were to flatten cities out (see Atlanta), jobs will still concentrate downtown. If jobs concentrate in one area, home prices in that area will also elevate (downtown, buckhead, etc).
> You're not getting a barista to commute 2 hours because the only alternative is living with 6 roommates
Personally, I wish I had 6 roommates. People aren't getting married in their 20s, so if they aren't living with their wife/husband, why shouldn't they want to live with friends?
All those places you listed are the cities with high cost of living and many people. "Where" is outside those cities--somewhere else. America is mostly empty space, even excluding parks, national forests, etc.!
> Personally, I wish I had 6 roommates. People aren't getting married in their 20s, so if they aren't living with their wife/husband, why shouldn't they want to live with friends?
It's fine if you do, but I feel like most people do not, and I do not. Being friends and being roommates can often be two very different experiences.
If you live in the empty space, where are the jobs? Where is the food? Where is the healthcare?
Are you talking about how certain industries are each concentrated to a small number of locations? That's for good reason. Suppose you were a software engineer, and every five or ten years you had to move across the country for your next job, because almost every single company is in a different city? Suppose you were running a software company, and it took every hire four months to start work because of the move?