You realize most of us in the midwest live in towns and cities too. We even have running water and electricity and computers! One time[1] I got into a town[2] and the neighborhoods/edge development/sprawl looked just like the real people in california and the I95 corridor have. We're still savages with trivial concerns about stuff like "can we feed everyone else this year", but I have great hopes for our people to be civilized someday in my lifetime!

Snark aside: look at population densities for metro areas for midwestern cities, they are pretty much the same as most costal cities. My particular town, which is pretty standard has a density greater than a lot of bay area towns. In last-mile installations, you can't pretend that a cookie cutter neighborhood isn't a cookie-cutter neighborhood. Further, in terms of overall connectivity, Kansas City has lots of fiber going into it - the place was a major rail hub, and fiber laying in the 90s was largely along rail tracks because of nice rightaways.

[1] actually every

[2] actually every one sized big-town and small - large cities (or their metro areas)

(ok, so that was a bit of a rant, but dismissing the midwest based largely on either ignorance or disingenuous bullshit really gets on my nerves.)