I suppose we're not talking about the same thing. What's your definition of low vs. high density? What's your definition of an urban center vs. rural living?
It seems like you guys have this utter disdain for people who live away from the cities and commute; yet these people can't afford to live in the cities. So you advocate for government subsidized housing right? Or extreme rent control? Or more welfare such that minimum-wage workers can afford downtown condos? Here in Seattle everyone voted for $15/hr minimum wage, but even at that you still can't afford a studio apartment anywhere near downtown; the closest you can afford is still a 45 minute bus or train ride in (or worse during rush hours). They also voted in a multibillion dollar public transit bill that's going to put in light rail to a few select neighborhoods over the next 20 years; well you know what's going to happen, right? Housing prices in those neighborhoods are going to skyrocket so that public transit is going to support the people who have money, not the minimum wage workers.
This is a very complex issue. People living away from big cities are likely from families who have lived away from cities for generations. Are you proposing we uproot everyone and move them into public housing skyscrapers in the middle of big cities? Or just do like Bremerton, WA did here and cut all the 4-lane roads to 2-lane roads, build sidewalks and bike lanes, and just hope that suddenly people will move to the downtown core? All while neglecting the rest of the city limits? (Hint: it didn't do anything other than increase traffic congestion; still nobody wants to live in downtown Bremerton.)
I live in a cluster of towns that are each centered around separate military bases. The military bases are relatively small but do support quite a bit of the local economy. But around the bases popped up shopping centers, a hospital, and all the other types of stuff that build up over 50 years. You can point your fingers and say that it's wrong that things have built out from the bases, and it's too expensive to maintain and whatever. But we're all young people who inherited this. You can point your fingers at your parents or grandparents or whoever all you want but it's not going to solve anything. What can you/we actually do about it as individuals to make the situation better?
I tell you what, I'm certainly not going to pack up my ****, sell my house, and move to an apartment in downtown Seattle. One, it won't help anything. Two, it will make my family miserable. And I don't expect anyone else to do that, either.