Imagine if you will, a world that is very different than the world we know today, but it is still Earth.
We have built cities at crossroads. Where lanes of commerce met with fresh water. Think of all the cities you know, they all group up around important trade routes. Some of these cities had to pipe in water (think aqueducts) from a long way away.
And the cities became larger because of opportunities brought from trade, and then came factories, and so the city was built up.
But, what happens if so many cities are abandoned for reasons (like rising sea levels, or sinking coast levels, or Woke/MAGA wars turning them to ash) and we had to start building again. Would we build in the same places again?
Amazon has made many stores obsolete. You no longer have to live in a city to have access to all that stuff.
What else is changing that will make the future so very different than it is today?
Technology changes everything
Soon we will have flying cars, so location becomes anywhere, and terrain getting there is not a concern.
But, that is nothing, we will build a supported monorail system, with automated, self powered, train cars. Basically drones, that will take your packages to their destination. The track is supported off the ground so that animals can easily pass underneath, so as not to block their migration paths. This will bring goods to wherever we might choose to set up our small community.
Rivers in the sky will bring fresh water. Already, there is a system where plants ask for water. They (especially trees) build up a certain charge, and this causes clouds to form and move to the location where plants need water. We could do the same thing, and have water delivered to our homes.
Small community sized, pollution-free, continuous electric producing technologies will provide the electricity these communities need. Without any necessity to continuously bring fuel in.
And, of course we will have internet access anywhere on earth.
With these, where we set up a community will not rely on any of the parameters that we use right now to find a good place to homestead.
Cities are not good for people
After we fully recognize that living in a city, where there are people everywhere, but friends nowhere, is bad for people.
We need to stay in tribes of about 100 people, and not much larger. This way our brains can hold all of our relationships. Then we can have true relationships with everyone around us, instead of just having half-connections to too many people, and no relationship to people who may want to harm us. (if we knew them, we would know their intentions)
Cities, with so many people packed in leaves little area for nature. And that is very important for human health. Not to mention, it leaves no space for farms; growing vegetables and meat.
Being caged up in a large building with so many other people also drops the birthrate. Being among the hormones of so many others depresses many of our body systems, including the drive to create children.
In so many ways, cities are not good for us.
There is so much unused area on the planet
There are forests, in New England, that no one has walked through in years.
If you drive through the middle of America, there are huge stretches where you don't see a building.
Land is not scarce. Only land in a highly built up city is scarce. So, if we do not want to build our small community homestead in a city, there are lots and lots of places to build it. So much area that we do not need to build anywhere close to each other.
In the future, we will learn to leave unused/unclaimed areas between our groups. This prevents things like fences being one foot to far this way or that. It stops so much of the arguments and conflicts between neighbors.
What all of this means? That Real Estate will become a silly concept.
The community will have an area that is what they use to grow food, and house themselves. It can only be so big, because humans do not infinite time each day. There is only so many acres you can care take. Further, there isn't anyone who would argue that that space is being used by that community. While the community still exists, that space is theirs, and you can tell that because they are there.
The idea of Real Estate we use in cities is because we are so tightly packed, with most people wanting more space, and some people who would sneakily take it if they could. Thus we need tightly control fences. And with people constrained to an area, we then have bidding wars. With people willing to pay all their available money for the land they live on, we get banksters who plot mayhem to make even more money, and drive up the price.
"Real Estate's" days are numbered. All the expensive city houses, stores, malls, will become valueless. As in, no one will pay to "buy" them. No one will want to live there. And if they did, they could just move in to any vacant building they find.