Could you expand on what you mean by availability of cheap land? It seems to me that despite the problems with suburban sprawl, it did exploit cheap availability of land that is generally available at the edges of cities. Especillay consiering the vast quanties of land that is rural in the US. More stats about land usage can be found at http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses.aspx#....
Two of the biggest factors in our happiness are a) the quality of your job b) the duration/stress of your commute. America faces a shortage of plots of residential real estate that are within a reasonable commute of quality of jobs. And you need to be in commuting distance of an abundance of good jobs, because job conditions at any one company can change fast, leaving you stuck. Suburban sprawl worked for a while, but in many metros the cheap land is so far out that the commuting times are horrendous.
As a remote worker, I don't commute. Therefore, I'm presently negotiating the purchase of hundreds of hectares of 50-year regenerated native forest in northern New Zealand. Price is <$1000/hectare, which is not expensive in western terms. However, my wife refuses to live there for the moment on account of the relative isolation - it's about 3.5 hours to Auckland. Because it needs a dwelling, I've been researching building over the last few years and have come to the conclusion that I'd like to try straw bale. As long as you keep it dry, you get all the high r-value (insulation) benefits of a passivhaus without being limited to modernist finishings, mass-produced truck-hauled materials and straight lines. Plus, it's surprisingly more fire and earthquake proof than pretty much anything else.
