Well, until the rent seeking class figured out how to asset inflate the education and property market. If you look at exploding debt levels in property, education, housing, and personal credit something is extremely broken and shoving everyone in the big city is not the long term answer unless we are looking at some massive social upheaval in the near term.

Now that communication is quick, and data more available, more people have an idea of how to give themselves the best opportunity. The best school district you can send your kids to, the best colleges they can go to, the majors they can study, etc.

Problem is it's all concentrated to a handful of options, so everyone is chasing after those, and the sellers know it so they can price it such that almost all the value is extracted from the buyer.

It's funny to think that it could partly be a consequence of all the easily available school rankings, all the way form elementary to university, as people can sort themselves by socioeconomic class much easier. But it could go the other way too, with the concentration being a consequence widening gaps in socioeconomic class. Either way, it feels like a feedback loop to me.

True, but that applies to rural areas as well: how many farmers are renting their land these days, or are working for big farm corps that bought all the family farms in the area a long time ago?