Once you mentally age out of the stage of life where your free time revolves around drinking and maximizing fun, living in an urban environment and dealing with the safety and quality of life issues that comes with it isn’t worth it any longer.
I get the argument that the suburbs are a economic disaster from a local government perspective but their popularity is a direct response to the majority of cities being crime ridden holes and rural America having few quality job opportunities.
Doing whatever it takes to make cities halfway safe again and bringing back blue collar work to the rural US would shrink the suburbs quickly