What I find interesting is that the back to the land approach to solving fertility and housing, seems to not work any better than the back to the land approach for alleviating depression era urban poverty did.

"Back to the land" has now been a popular proposed solution in search of a problem for over a century.

We have a society really not updated our cultural intuitions about the countryside since farming mechanization made it obsolete.

In the world of 2025, the U.S. city is taxed to subsidize corn and soy production of giant landowners for unclear sentimental reasons. The European city is taxed to subsidize the European countryside to maintain a physical buildout from a completely different era of technology

This speaks to more than just our era. I actually think it is telling that just as the countryside became obsolete (1900s) academics quickly embraced a view no one in antiquity held, that the ancient city was purely parasitical on the countryside.