sprawl

Driving to and from camp this weekend, we were kind of appalled by the utter sprawl in SoCal's back country. Parts of the road were just through farming areas, but every, oh, five minute or so, we'd come over a hill and see thousands of cookie-cutter houses. Once, we just saw the farmland with a graded hill behind it, ready for the three car garages and streets like AspenGlen and WindyPines.
These are McMansions, 6-7 bedrooms. Out 40-60 minutes from any kind of urban center. In one case, I had no idea where you would even buy groceries. I have no problem with people moving away from it all, but why in the HECK would you live in a suburb that's not even sub to anything? That is it's own little pretend community smack dab in the middle of cow country? Where there are no jobs to support a seven bedroom lifestyle, so you MUST commute hours in each direction to pay the mortgage for said McMansion?
Please, someone explain this to me? Or--actually don't. Let me just remember the open fields and the rock-pile mountains and the wide valleys with the towering thunderclouds over them. And try to forget the benighted suburbia that lay over the next ridge.