Sounds like a lifestyle choice. Stop packing into cities like a can of sardines and it wont be an issue. Being inflexible to literal physics and reality is a personal issue.
This is less a physics problem and more of a zoning/planning issue.
If you want to work and have a life, stop living where jobs are! Simply don't make adequate money to survive! Simply die!
Being unaware of reality is also a personal issue too, bud.
There are a lot of mid sized cities with reasonable housing and decent job prospects with a reasonable commute (< 30m). I know, I live in one of them.
Which one? This used to be true where I live (Twin Cities area, Minnesota) but is no longer. Prices have really exploded pretty much everywhere over the past 10 years, my home purchased in 2013 is now worth about double. It's easy to miss if you haven't been on the market.
I haven't checked in a while. In my city there are still reasonable houses (I don't want to say for obvious reasons), but I bought mine in the early 2000s and it only recently doubled. I just looked and you can still find fixer-uppers in not great neighborhoods for under $100K, but you can live in them with electric/water and all that.
Cool. Let me work remote.
Living in a place with no jobs is not exactly the solution for financial issues. And when you commute for more then 3 hours each day, it becomes impossible to be present parent or keep relationships or just do anything except work.