[alwa]

It sure seems that humans have tried to build and live in such hives for an awfully long time—Wikipedia calls it 7000 BCE [0]. Sure, a drop in the bucket in evolutionary time—but neither is it purely a skyscraper-era phenomenon.

Even to this day, all that undeveloped farmland is dirt cheap compared to the hive life, and yet people vote with their feet and their money for the hive. For a substantial proportion of them, the first step is to exchange the countryside life specifically for this informal/improvised condition of dwelling, just to be close to the hive.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throu...

[mantas]

A small portion of humans lived in cities in 7000 BCE. And many of those cities were closer to what we consider a village by modern standards.

Mass urbanization into megapolies is 200 years old at best. With very few exceptions in older eras that didn’t house a big portion of humans in given eras.

[ejb999]

and for most of history, most people had to live where most of the jobs were - a large % of people no longer need to do that. If you had to work in the city, buying dirt cheap land a hundred miles away didn't work - now it can for some/many, and if enough people with some money can do it, it will then have the effect of diversifying that local economy, such that now a few builders, landscapers, restaurants and other amenities and the loop feed itself.

I imagine in the future only the very rich will choose to live in some cities, the very poor will mostly have no choice and have to live there and large swathes of the middle class will love to get out into the country/small villages if their jobs allow it.