If land/rent is so high, why don’t we or the government create, or invest in less desirable or underdeveloped towns?

I keep seeing this videos on YouTube about ghost towns, or from my parents friends where our town used to be a shitshow(full of crimes, bars, prostitute, etc). it's just good now and stuff

If you optimistically look at it, why don't we just invest in this ghost towns or create our own towns. I mean this will always lead to money, since you cant go below 0. Or am I missing something?

Aren't rent/land prices kinda also our fault since we keep moving into "bigger" and "better" cities?