When the risk of unemployment or underemployment is higher, why live somewhere that limits your opportunities? An expensive house or a cheap house is irrelevant if you are unemployed for a significant stretch of time and can't afford a mortgage period.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I justified the increased cost of living as the sunshine tax as well as the cost of reducing the risk of unemployment in a down economy. Even in the event of another crash specific to the tech industry, I guarantee I'd have an easier time getting another job out here compared to flyover country.
This is the specific reason why I have self-limited my living situation to one of the major tech centers in the US. The downside is nearly unlimited if you're in a rural area: particularly if you have a house. You must be able to get a job if your company collapses, and most companies get shirty about remote work for people they don't know. So you're stuck trying to move in a hurry, to a place where you have no network. Hopefully it's not a down economy and lots of people are looking... then things are even dicier.
Move to the city, young man (or woman). There be jobs there.
On the bright side, with lower cost of housing the mortgage will cost you less and will be easier to pay off. I'm in my early 40s, have three kids, and we actually own our house. If we had lived in a similar house in a larger city we'd still be grinding through the mortgage.
I guess what I'm tring to say is that there plenty of middle ground between living in San Francisco and living the Unabomber dream in the Montana forests. There are a lot of places on the face of the earth where there are not hundreds of nerby companies hiring, but maybe five or ten within driving distance. And where you can actually afford to buy a house.
Texas offers more sun and a solid stable economy as well as much lower costs. Something to consider?
And all of these cities are downright cheap compared to pretty much anywhere on either of the coasts.
In the event of a tech crash you're better if in nearly any major city outside of SV where even tech companies are based around more "blue chip" industries.
In "flyover country" many (possibly most) tech jobs are created by other industries and would be insulated.
Detroit's been doing that, the biggest expense seems to be having to tear up the roads since gravel/dirt is safer than an unmaintained paved road. For the places that do have growth potential, the cheapness of real estate should just encourage people to redevelop as infill.
Are we worried about crumbling building materials leaching toxins into the surrounding environment or is it more of a concern about blight/eye-sores?
That is assuming the people there have the resources to move. We'd mitigate them to provide opportunity for that choice. Those crumbling houses and decaying ruins will be the home to the members of our society least able to help themselves.
That solution isn't in building up the burbs though. It would be in making it easier to move to and live in places that aren't dying.
In any developing country there is a constant pull of rural to urban migration. The big stumbling block is having a place to live and a job for when you get to the city, not how fancy your village was.
Further the articles main point may be that mitigating those problems in the suburbs may be harder than the all ready tricky task of mitigating them in denser urban areas due to higher infrastructure costs, increased transportation costs and more limited areas for new development.