I'm also not sure, and values are always population dependent, but simply the fact that land (and nature on it) is one of the most scarce resource nowadays, it seems straightforward to say that if we price in land use compact wins over sprawl.
I agree that there's enough energy and stuff in theory to be green and live anywhere, but currently in practice there isn't. (For example just now with the PG&E blackouts the very real cost of living spread out shows itself.) At the same time you are correct that if some pandemic strikes it might be better in a log cabin, but ... for how long? Are you ready to hunt? Grow your own wheat, and so on? And HongKong seems to be doing fine, after SARS they are doing a lot of proactive stuff.
Land is not scarce. I know this because I've both surveyed a large part of the world from the air myself, and from data. Please cite data.
PG&E's failure is because of poor capital investment, bad infrastructure decisions, and lack of federal antitrust intervention into a mismanaged California-ordained private energy monopoly.
You don't have to live in a log cabin, I am not talking only of pandemics but also the mental well-being of people who want to spread their elbows a bit using the copious land available on Earth, and you don't have to hunt or grow your own wheat to live in a suburban or semi-rural place and buy food and products locally (although there is nothing wrong or crazy about hunting and growing some of your own food, if you want to... we just also have this thing called "money" that you can trade for goods and services that you don't want to provide yourself).
I'm only responding now in an attempt to get you to reconsider the frankly baseless assumptions that you are asserting as facts – the truth is, and the point is: there are ways for people to live efficiently enough in urban, suburban, and rural settings, and we should stop judging that very personal preference and instead focus our time and investments on improving efficiencies across the spectrum (and fighting always to enforce legislation that engenders more competition in every marketplace).
I agree that there's enough energy and stuff in theory to be green and live anywhere, but currently in practice there isn't. (For example just now with the PG&E blackouts the very real cost of living spread out shows itself.) At the same time you are correct that if some pandemic strikes it might be better in a log cabin, but ... for how long? Are you ready to hunt? Grow your own wheat, and so on? And HongKong seems to be doing fine, after SARS they are doing a lot of proactive stuff.