Yes, insane zoning limits in cities in the US since the 60s have indeed made it impossible to build near jobs.
But there's abandoned medieval villages (no plumbing or electricity so far...) in hilly rural Italy.
But there's abandoned medieval villages (no plumbing or electricity so far...) in hilly rural Italy.
there's small towns with fine electricity and plumbing in rural Italy but they are de-populating anyway, cause most people want to live in/nearby cities as that is where money and opportunity generally is.
The same everywhere I think (bar few cases like the Netherlands which are basically a single sprawl).
Hungary just published their most recent census, and all of the country has depopulated in the last ten years except for Budapest.
The big hope is that the trend will reverse with more remote-ization, but it's, well, a hope.
building near jobs is either building company towns or embedding classism and environmental injustice into property. would you live next door to a small nuke power plant because it was colocated with your office job? how about a refinery? a bsl3 lab? sewer treatment? or would you force those workers to live near their work and put them and all the dirty parts of civilization far away from the upper class clean places?
Is it a good deal? Ask me in twenty years.