I prefer the land in my neighborhood being used for cemeteries rather than for industry.
If the market prefers isolated burial, then there's a market for space-consuming cemeteries. This probably costs a lot in government regulations, so cemeteries have to be big enough to absorb the initial costs.
Cemeteries are kind of a dumb idea and part of a backwards industry, driven by some silly need to bury people in quaint suburbs of death.
That sentiment is my bias showing, but it's kind of a no brainer: cemeteries are superfluous and are basically societal debt at this point. Let's hope we can count on people to move towards more economically friendly means of disposable:
1. Dump your dead friend in the woods. 2. Dump your dead friend in the ocean. 3. Dump your dead friend's ashes somewhere.
These are all better options than hogging some space, digging a hole, dumping your dead friend into the hole, then telling everyone that this land forever belongs to someone who can no longer use it.
They're a neat mix of history, nature, and art. They're often isolated, beautiful, and quiet. Important people get monuments in public squares; all but the most poor throughout US history get a small plot and a little headstone. It's fun to think about people who otherwise have been completely forgotten: the eras they lived in, the family members they're buried with, the countries where they came from, their accomplishments in life, and sometimes the sacrifices they made for me. They're no dumber than any other monument you see to anyone anywhere else, except these are the monuments for the 99%, figuratively speaking.
Visiting a cemetery also reminds me that I'm mortal and one day my fate will be the same.
There's an extremely fair case to be made against cemeteries from environmental and/or space concerns, and you can accomplish a lot of the above goals in other ways. However, the dismissal of a very human desire to remember and/or be remembered deserved a response.
Are physical monuments getting more or less popular? I mean, my whole history and life is basically on Facebook, which acts as a more thorough monument than any limited gravestone ever could. Remembering people through electronics seems like a complete eco-friendly replacement for altars and other space consuming habits.