This is going to be an increasing issue and it's something that Western nations in particular just haven't had to deal with until now.
The West came out of Europe. Europe is small. To put it in perspective, the distance from SF to NYC is ~2900 miles. The distance from London to Baghdad is ~3100 miles. So abundance of land is not a problem the West has traditionally had (not until colonization anyway).
Added to this, mortality has been high but population growth has been higher. The last century saw a dramatic rise in life expectancy (primarily due to a drop in infant mortality). The last 50 years has seen a dramatic drop in population growth (the lesson seems to be that the natural reaction to uncertain times by people is to breed more).
So the West is being crushed by the weight of supporting an ageing population from a system established at a time retirement was a rarity.
Add to this to overall trend of the last century has been one of urbanization.
And just to put the nail in the coffin, low-tech manufacturing has largely fled the West for the developing world where labour is cheap.
Our entire society seems premised on both population and economic growth. What exactly do we do when the population starts shrinking? This is a bridge we haven't crossed yet.
The experience in parts of the US seem to indicate the transition won't be an easy one. Cities with negative population growth have suffered from appalling crime and poverty that seems much harder to flush out in a city full of vacant buildings.
The ongoing story of Detroit is nothing short of surreal. That's a city that is slowly being reclaimed by nature, which is really what should happen. Half-empty cities are not healthy cities.
Now add to this the whole concept of home ownership. Home ownership is aspirational. It's political goal. Home ownership comes with a huge cost however.
- The unlucky who buy in declining cities have a huge part of their wealth eroded leading to virtually impoverished retirement.
- It leads to an inflexible labour market (people are unwilling or unable to move to where the jobs are).
- It has a snowball effect, particularly in the US, where much of the funding for local infrastructure comes from property taxes.
I haven't been to upstate New York. I'm one of those living in NYC where half a million dollars for a studio doesn't seem that outrageous.
If there's one lesson from this is that everything is transitory. I believe one of the largest fallacies of the Twentieth Century was that the idea set in that everything was going to keep growing and keep getting better forever. The institutions you grew up with would last a life time.
Hell, this even applies to climate where we base our views on a ridiculously narrow band of Earth's or even human history.
Cities come. Cities go. Nations come. Nations go. To think that the USA or Europe will exist as they do today a thousand years from now is the height of hubris and/or naivete.