I can spend 400k to buy a nice four bedroom house with a garage and a basement on half an acre sixty miles from work, or 400k to buy a beat down 1 bedroom condo ten miles from work (nothing near the area where I work is under 900k)...

That's not really a city planning issue, it's just the way things are in hyper-urban areas.

I hope so much that I can pull off a remote job in the next year or so -- believe me, I'd rather never drive if I could.