Having grown up in a rural area, the openness and freedom/room to play outdoors was - IMO - well worth the inconvenience of things being more spread out (not that this was ever that big of a problem; the main pain point was more the lack of sidewalks and bike lanes, but that's relatively easy to fix).

This was in an area where (IIRC) the mandated minimum lot size was 1 acre, and the vast majority of properties were 5+ (I lived on 8).