New England, and indeed much of the East Coast, is a far cry from the rest of the country. The width of the entire state of Massachusetts is smaller than the distance between some neighboring towns in the Midwest.
Yes, but the point remains that all those spread-out towns already exist. Unless they're actually abandoned we're not going to bulldoze them.
The difference is that they're not within daily/weekly commuting distances of tech centers as are many of the outlying areas of most tech centers--the Bay Area being something of an exception. So living there would be true remote working as opposed to just not living in a desired city core.
Massacheusetts is almost 200 miles wide, I'm having a little bit of trouble picturing places that are that far removed from the nearest town outside of places like the empty parts of Nevada or Wyoming.
I guess it depends on your definition of "nearest town". By the official "settlement hierarchy", in which a thousand souls or more comprise a town, that's true. Once you get into 20k or 30k, though, it's pretty easy to find places in the West or Midwest that are more than 200 miles from the nearest town of that size.
Also I don't have any GIS tools handy but I started poking around with google maps and 200 miles is a long way even in the west, It looks like all of Nebraska is within 200 miles of a 20k city, and so is almost all of Texas except maybe down by Big Bend.
The difference is that they're not within daily/weekly commuting distances of tech centers as are many of the outlying areas of most tech centers--the Bay Area being something of an exception. So living there would be true remote working as opposed to just not living in a desired city core.