This is my political program for the US. First of all, it sounds funny. It does not roll off the tongue. I like that, because it would definitely get messy. The basic idea is: takesuburbs, farmland, natural areas and suitable "town centers" to build cheap rural housing, agricultural employment, energy infrastructure (solar, wind, transmission) and various connections to the nearest city (roughly based on metropolitan area).
In one way, it would be trying to correct for the effects (intended and not) of urban renewal. Suburbs would be diminished, and the physical distance between urban areas and rural areas would be shortened. It would seek to integrate urban and rural america. Obviously, there's need to be protection of minority communities in this plan, and negotiations with first nations.
(Note: This is kinda like the polar opposite of the Chinese "to the countryside" movement, which was where urban reactionaries were sent to the countryside to live with the CPC's core constituency. My Rural Renewal would be more like.... the cultural revolution brought to a bourgeoisie countryside)
The exurb (and also most American suburbs) are built on a teetering supply chain of overuse of resources, that were made possible by colonization and imperialism.
The city itself can minimize the impact of each resident, but citizens end up dependent on the market, and we usually see urbanization that doesn't reduce any of the population of the countryside, and thereby just makes the whole country reliant on imports. The only sustainable solution is when more people in cities is balanced by fewer people in rural areas on the other side of the equation, or vice versa. Ultimately you want to be reducing the impact of settler colonial society, opening up space for indigenous land management or even just more nature preserves. The goal is to take as many people as possible out of the conventional approach.
If Americans were forced to live within the biological and geological carrying capacity of the land in a 50-mile radius of the municipality, most settled places in the country would be outright unviable. If the place where you live requires you to get in a car multiple times a day to get to all the necessities, then it's only a viable place in the window between 1920 and 2050. This is why you can't just put people in just any existing housing units; the built environment is predicated on extraction and waste.
If you take just food autonomy for a municipality, with an acre of farmland supporting 4 people throughout the year and a bicycle commute to the farthest farm as the limiting factor, you get a maximum urban population in the low hundreds of thousands.
Interestingly enough, there already exist many small cities within this size, as the biggest thing in commuting distance. Most of them have medical, educational, and legal/governmental institutions, a reasonably developed local economy, and intercity transit by bus or train. These tend to be much cheaper than metropolises.
Instead of trying to achieve political wins in the big cities with their large pre-existing political machines, we should target the smaller cities, where we can save more, make more of a proportional impact, have the same quality of life (or better) compared to a big city, and reshape the national experience and imagination of what's possible. If you get a majority on a small city council and zoning board, you can put up high-density housing, set limits on sprawl (accurately price it by eliminating public works subsidies), retrofit the city for busses/trams and bikes/pedestrians, curate the kinds of businesses you want, the sky's the limit.
The resources to win in Portland, for instance, could sooner win in Eugene, Corvallis, Medford, Salem, and Bend all together; imho these would have a greater impact.
These are some interesting ideas, especially the latter part about winning over small and medium sized municipalities. It would be all the more effective as part of a loose regional or national coalition of like-minded municipalities that can pool funds and share basic resources like marketing/agitprop materials. I say loose because that ensures a local focus and more purposeful scope for the coalition, actively resisting a tendency to nationalize into one super duper party that can be co-opted or lose focus. This would, however, comprise the basic elements from which a revolutionary party could be formed if conditions deteriorate.
I suppose this is basically just describing
although that org seems a bit more national-focused compared with what I wrote.