I've always fancied the German style of having dense clusters of houses/shops around a major train station / highway, with farmland in between. Look at satellite imagery [1] around Stuttgart, for instance. You can totally have walkable city centers in less crowded areas.

Of course Germany is not the United States. I don't know anything about agriculture, or to what extent the needs of German agriculture vs US agriculture would be met by such an arrangement. But this being HN, maybe someone knowledgeable can chime in!

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Stuttgart,+Germany/@48.662...