Sure there are, at the federal, state & local level. Here's a few examples that a quick search turned up:
https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs
https://www.ahfc.us/buy/loan-programs/rural-programs
https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/taxes-and-financing/r...
https://www.harmony.mn.us/index.asp?SEC=022F2A6B-7FAA-4E0D-8...
Maybe somewhere in the US, but in no areas I spent considerable time enough to be tuned into local politics and policies was this remotely the case.
Since I've been alive the political power has decidedly and unashamedly been fully in the "suburban living" policy group. Every meaningful infrastructure spending, expansion, zoning policy, etc. served to further those interests either directly or indirectly. The "urban policy" group wins were generally not material and mostly window dressing stuff like BRT routes and a few more miles of unconnected bike lanes.
If there was actual choice between "good urban living" and "good rural living" I'd totally agree. The issue is we've spent 100 years building suburbia at the expense of everything else, both as a political and financial investment.
I'm not sure how we can hope to stop that inertia short of being limited by cheap energy or running out of actual land.
Having the residents of the suburbs paying for their true cost seems like a great way to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
As the video points out, would people be willing to start paying $9000 in property taxes instead of $1800 to stop operating the city at a loss every year?
I completely agree. I think the point I was trying to convey is that it's not just financial inertia going on here - it's probably the single most cohesive and politically active power bloc there is in the country.
From FHA to single-family home zoning, there are many laws that specifically encouraged sprawl into what were, at the time, rural areas. That became the suburbs.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera...
I've lived in both "sardines in a can" and "sardines scattered all around the room" (less dense) levels of density for significant portions of my life, and I've experienced firsthand the many benefits and downsides of each. I imagine you have, too.
One thing I've only recently learned is suburbs are subsidized by the people living in the denser areas that you seem to strongly dislike.
This video gets into the math behind why that is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
In my low density town of ~4,300 lots of us pay > $9,000 a year in property taxes.
But can a city “un-annex” land? I imagine the residents in the lower density area would not want to spin off, both because of the schools and other civic institutions they use, but also because of the higher taxes.
I had FiOS for a brief glorious time though!
"Why would I do this? Over hundreds of years society has advanced to the point where I can easily have a ton of job opportunities without tearing myself away from the rest of my family and friends. I don't have to spend significant chunks of my time traveling back and forth from stores for basic necessities. If I have a medical emergency there's definitely a major trauma center close by, not to mention any chronic issue where I have multiple specialists in dozens of fields and access to ongoing treatment facilities at my fingertips. I don't want to live like some dystopian partial apocalypse set us back 80 years. A lot more people think like me. We didn't go through 20+ years of education so we could only see family at holidays and birthdays all to live like having to drive half an hour for groceries is actually some pastoral & pure way of life. Honestly it sounds like it sucks."
Both your point of view and the one that I presented above (which is not my actual opinion) get it wrong. The truth is that we all make tradeoffs in these decisions, and we all choose where our own lines are, and there aren't just 2 options, it's a spectrum.