I have long said that sooner or later we will get back to living where the weather is moderate and there is lots of water.
If too many people moved to those “moderate” weather-and-water areas, they would still crowd in like a hive of bees or an ant nest, as long as there were no limits on that. Pretty soon, they would have hacked and bulldozed all the native vegetation, replaced it with concrete and grass from Florida, be running out of water and have the place all crapped up right out to the edge of the burbs-just like they do right now.
People need to learn to survive either without a cast of thousands next door again, or live in their hive with limited natural resources if that is what they like. Most people I know in these a outlying areas are tired of having their water and other resources sucked up by nearby cities-a lot of them have restricted development just about to 0-that was done here before 2000, and is a big reason why I choose to live here, hard life and all.
If you can’t live one family to an acreage lot, with rules on everything from pesticide use to land clearing-and not plant invasive non-native species-then stay away. This is where the crops and animals everyone eats are raised, after all...
And before anyone asks, yes, I was involved in the less radical conservation and greenbelt groups when I lived in the city...