Are you deliberately missing the point? The ecological impacts of sustaining human settlements go far beyond housing sites. The American west is overstretched f

Are you deliberately missing the point? The ecological impacts of sustaining human settlements go far beyond housing sites. The American west is overstretched for water. Much of the land west of the Mississippi is effectively already overpopulated. Beyond ecological concerns, you can't add people without compromising the lifestyle of people already here. Go ahead and ask people in most cities if they want their town to be a lot more like Los Angeles. The answer 90% of the time will be No. But that's what's happening anyway. This idea that there is a ton of land for new urbanization is obviously wrong. The good land is all in use. What's left is semi-arid, flood plain, or unsuitable in other ways. You can't just stick people out in a prairie or desert or on an Appalachian hill top. You have to ship in food and pipe out the sewage. That's not economically viable most places. The one area of the country that could actually support a higher population density is the great lakes region, but it's in fact slowly depopulating at the moment. Immigrants are not moving to Erie, PA. They are moving to places like NYC and cities in California. So this point that there is available land is a pointless academic discussion unless you want to impose soviet style internal passports.