Our experiences color our views. I grew up in rural towns (<800 people) to cities of 15K people(! :-) ). Lack of services, lack of opportunities (library? yeah - 1 room of books from 1950), wandering in the woods was cool until about 12ish? then it was "yeah, I saw that tree yesterday..", not to mention I'm not sure how many parents these days would be comfortable letting their kids wander around - especially in 'desolate' areas ... Also, these were 'mill towns' so one employer basically employed everyone.
I ran as fast as I could when I was 18.
oh - and btw, pulling utilities can be quite expensive - 'going a little further' isn't always easy (or even possible).
So while a 'quasi-rural' (suburb with larger yards? :-) ) might be your idea of heaven, it doesn't necessarily translate well across the board.
In short, what people want/like or what is 'better' is pretty hard to get a consensus on.
Suburbs are certainly not my ideal of "heaven". I feel like I'm being argued with by younger people still in the phase where they're in love with the city, extrapolating my points into general indictments of density. They're most certainly not. All I'm pointing out is that once you're already past needing to drive everywhere, having the space to actually do things and be left alone is much nicer than being packed up on your neighbors.
I'm actually an empty nester, and I took my car off the road like 2 years ago cuz I never use it. I put in a server room, electronics workstation, basic woodworking, and a bunch of 3d printers. Couple that with being in a small 'city' now (500K people) and I really like the balance. Plenty of space in the house (1700 sq ft), no huge yard to maintain, can get pretty much anything delivered, no septic/well to deal with. I'm very happy with how its working out for me. On the other hand, I think I only have a 7500sq ft lot (1700 of it covered by the house), so others would probably consider it small - especially if you want a pool in the backyard.
Neither dense suburbs nor rural suburbs are defined by economic productivity, because they're residences. If this shifts with work from home, their focus will still be on quality of life rather than packing people in as close as possible for more "specific revenue".
> the rural living you describe is probably no better
If you have to drive everywhere anyway, do you also want to be looking through your neighbor's windows? I do miss being able to walk many places (city living), but that isn't the density tradeoff I'm talking about here.
In general your arguments seem to be extrapolating from comparing urban to rural/suburban. Comparing rural and suburban directly, I don't find your points compelling. Going from houses on 1/2 acre lots to houses on two acre lots is one half the linear density. The costs of transportation and utilities increase a little, but aren't going to double - once you're rolling or trenching, going a little further is easy.
Furthermore I'm currently in a quasi-rural area with gigabit muni fiber, so I don't buy that argument either. Whether there is the political will to build out modern Internet access or suffer the extractive oligopoly depends entirely on the politics of an area.
> what about kids who grow up with fewer opportunities?
IMO kids in suburbia are the most caged in. Having to be driven anywhere sucks, but that's a given for both areas under comparison. Once you get past the nadir of suburbia, the increased space helps - kids in rural areas can go play outside, wander in the woods, build stuff, fly drones, etc.