> Single family housing externalizes the costs of transportation

I've bought my car, I recharge it from my p.v. and the grid, so transportation costs are mine. Instead I do not makes some big companies profit moving me with subscription based collective transportation means, who are economically a nonsense.

Collective, improperly named public, transport was born to move workers to/from the factory and for this purpose it's very efficient, it normally run at nearly-full capacity. But a broad one is uneatable, and that's why all of them are expensive and heavy subsidized. We, the people need to move from any place to any other anytime, surely there are certain "common patterns", like the one generated by the office to/from downtown, but serving such patterns and forcing the society to follow them, forcing cities and offices for instance, means having built a big machine to move just few hours a day efficiently, while the rest of the 24h it not move or it waste energy being nearly empty. Private cars are still needed because we still need to move, bringing stuff with us and so on. It's an IMMENSE waste of resources. Instead WFH for all eligible jobs we need to move FAR LESS, and those who WFH spread enable others who can't to live spread as well and locally move at a short distance for local services and others jobs. Those who lose are Black Rock, Uber, Century 21 and so on. Not the average Joe or the society at a whole.

> utilities

They do not. Being spread means having p.v. in a large slice of the inhabited earth where p.v. make sense, this means being interested in shifting loads, typically in hours that the grid is strained, shifting them on local microgrid in self-consumption. Right now I have aircon on for the whole home (it's a new one, so all electric and very insulated) and car recharging (1.6kW absorbed) plus the basic home loads for a total of 4.3kW while from the grid I absorb 0-10W. If you tell me that large energy reseller suffer loss because of that, because they suck less money from us, yes, that's true, and that's why in many countries they try to impose laws against self-consumption or metering production to tax it. But in SOCIAL terms living spread we ease the life of the grid.

> overall environmental impact

I think you agree that a new home consume much less than an old one. Now try to imaging how we can rebuild cities to makes them all electric respecting modern low energy needs vs how we can rebuild single family homes. Imaging the environmental TCO considering that single family homes can be made in wood with small light foundations instead of consuming large quantity of steel, cement and so on. Do you imaging in not so hot climate heating in the winter from geothermal heat pumps for a city? It would generate no less earthquakes than the oil fracking... For spread homes? It have negligible impact especially if we have local energy production so we can waste it reversing the cycle in summer even if we do not need to cool the home. Do you imaging the environmental impact of a large mass of concrete, glass and asphalt of a modern city in mere terms of thermal mass exposed to the Sun light instead of the thermal mass of spread homes made in wood with p.v. on the roof NOT integrated in it (meaning there is free air underneath and they shadow the underneath roof? Do you imaging the large alteration of water cycle a big city makes tapping any source for a vast area and rejecting an immense amount of water instead tapping and rejecting locally? Did you know the fakir's carpet of nails, why it doesn't sting? It's the same principle in toxicology or the one of the concentration: dilute enough cyanide and you can drink it without being harmed. Concentrate enough and you are dead. Similarly hit the earth with sparse big nails and the earth will suffer, hit with an immense amount of nails all spread and you'll made little damage.

Really try to reason alone instead of assuming the PR you know are right. You'll came to similar conclusion.