Maybe on the popular coasts, but most of inner USA is little pockets of development spread out among large wilderness

Hell even the California countryside is like this, once you get far enough away from the big cities

Agreed. I think people on the coasts (or at least the east coast) fail to appreciate the vastness of the rest of the country that they so often look down on.

> once you get far enough away from the big cities

This is the key statement.

Build more SFH suburbs, gonna take you longer and longer to get far away from those cities.

Yes, but it really isn't that far. As soon as you leave the edge of suburba-mega-town you're in wilderness again. Where I live it's much less than a half-hour of driving, from the most interior parts of the city, in most conditions.