I have driven a couple of times between Phoenix and the East coast of the U.S. and the spaces between cities, particularly in the Southwest, are simply vast. Yo

I have driven a couple of times between Phoenix and the East coast of the U.S. and the spaces between cities, particularly in the Southwest, are simply vast. You can drive for hours without seeing a human structure beyond perhaps a signpost or U.S. Geological Survey marking. There's room for the entire world's population to fit into Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. The only limitation is availability of water, and that's solvable with technology (desalination, atmospheric capture). When existing cities become too congested, sprawling, or unaffordable, the clear solution is to build new ones. You can drop a megalopolis or two into the badlands and house an additional 20 million people in comfortable, modern neighborhoods with home ownership as the norm. The Economist has a eurocentric perspective that there's little available land, but not so in North America.