We do in some places! Actual cities have exactly that profile, and have the opposite problem of this article; a dense city core that is so expensive that it can be hard to live in.

This article is really describing the failures of suburbia, that soulless monstrosity. By all rights, no matter what is legally true, this 'Appleton' is not a city, or a town or a village, it's just the vestigial growth of people who all want to live in suburbia.