Everyone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with too many others, especially not too far below your socioeconomic class.
This would seem to naturally result in the pattern of rich and poor suburbs clustered around cities with the constant struggle of individual housing vs shared housing, car vs public transport, public parks vs private yards, etc. Only recent factor I see changing is the delay in having children into the 30s means a lot of 20 somethings that aren't looking for suburbs, and if they don't ever have kids then maybe they never will want for suburbs.
Everyone? Plenty only move to a city because they have to, to get work. Then Nothing to do with want in many cases. Perhaps even the majority.
There's not the same need for everyone to congregate in one place there was when your factory or shipyard needed 40,000 workers every shift. The internet should have enabled more local and rural enterprises to thrive, except that's not turned out to be the case at all.
Those who want to go to the city only because they have to work fall under the "want access to labor markets" part of my statement. "Everyone" is an exaggeration of course on my part, but it still seems like a significant portion of the population, especially high earners, want incompatible parts of urban and suburban life.
I was commenting on the claim that "few want to retire in the city", which I agree with, but in old age you need access to medical professionals and other facilities that aren't economically feasible in rural populations, so even though people want the rural life, they don't want or can't afford to give up those other conveniences of more urban areas.
At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with too many others, especially not too far below your socioeconomic class.
This would seem to naturally result in the pattern of rich and poor suburbs clustered around cities with the constant struggle of individual housing vs shared housing, car vs public transport, public parks vs private yards, etc. Only recent factor I see changing is the delay in having children into the 30s means a lot of 20 somethings that aren't looking for suburbs, and if they don't ever have kids then maybe they never will want for suburbs.