Add in doctors and other specialized labor which is important but thankfully rarer in need and have a larger "patient footprint".
That small towns are mostly dying is no accident or sinister conspiracy - they are victims of not being able to compete with scale barring some niches like say tourist towns.
The only implausible escape from cities as a situation involve not only teleportation but cheap teleportation which effectively scribbles over many spatial constraints.
There are definately downsides, but they can be solved. We have systems to collect and clean waste so that is no longer a problem. When cars can be mostly eliminated and the ones that are left will be autonomus, that’s the traffic and air pollution problem mostly solved.
Then we can also have more of untouched land for wildlife and our general pleasure.
I live in a rural area in Ohio. Any eligible land that isn't being tilled already gets converted to farm land. Plots are getting consolidated, treelines are getting leveled and burned to gain another couple acres of arable land.
I think if we all move to cities there will be some natural parks but most of it will be converted to ag and industry. If you get a couple million acres of privately held land, who knows what's happening in there.
Higher densities of people make many things more efficient, e.g. shared heating in apartment building, making mass transit viable, sharing resources like food and water. Climate change is forcing our hand on transitioning to a higher-efficiency society, but we would have to do it soon anyway because we are running out of oil. When you can't enjoy the energy density of fossil fuels, efficiency will start to matter a whole lot more. Our current mode where a single person might travel up to 50 or 100 miles every day, just to live their life, is a ridiculously inefficient way of spending your time on Earth.
Secondly, habitat loss is the single greatest cause of the mass extinction of species we are currently experiencing. Most of that is agriculture, but urban sprawl certainly plays a big part. If we want to enjoy, you know, other species existing, we should be looking for ways to reduce the amount of land we need to occupy as humans.
Also, a bonus: kids that grow up in walkable neighborhoods have been shown to have the highest levels of upward economic mobility. So really if you want to do right by your kids, you should be moving to a walkable area and reducing your car use.
For personal interactions, you have face-to-face talking and generally (in the context of clustering) access to many people with aligned interests to talk and interact with in person in real time.
Culturally, you have art installations, exhibitions, and all sorts of activities like musical concerts, theater, etc. that aren't exactly reproduced remotely.
In terms of work and hobbies, clusters can give access to tools, workshops, that might be too expensive to have at home. Say using a hackerspace/fab lab vs. having a complete electronics lab in your house or a laser cutter.
All of those should be more readily accessible (in terms of transportation time and cost) if you are well located within a large hub.
Of course, remote does have significant cost benefits in some respects (housing and supplies), and for some professions the benefits of cities aren't strictly necessary, but clustering and the physical world should not be underestimated or thought obsolete.
Sure I can work from anywhere, but businesses (especially leisure) tend to concentrate where people concentrate.
Just like when I went trekking. I asked our guide once, _where do we have to go for the trail to be less crowded?_
He named a few places. Then mentioned there were no stairs on the slopes of the mountains he just named. No hot water for showers in the lodges on the way. Much fewer places to stay to eat or sleep. And not as much choice on the menu.
Wether it's around the Annapurna or in the US, businesses and services develop and concentrate where there they can find more customers. People go where they can find the products, services and experiences they long for, and the people they care about.
as long as our food is on one specific location so will we.
If the trend of subsistence farming because more than that we might see a shift in urban areas.
I live in an completely unremarkably small city except for the fact that there is one big employer with a lot of money. The rents and house prices are only going up.
The discussion always seems to assume that you live in a dense central city or in Nowhereville USA. In reality, a huge number of people live in suburbs, exurbs, and less dense parts of the city.
There's no shortage of local shopping. And "downtown" is easily accessible for those times when someone wants to take advantage of the resources (like better restaurants and theater) that are mostly less available outside of the city proper.