> Or, we could zone areas to encourage people to live in towns where it's feasible for both corporations and the government to provide infrastructure and services at a reasonable cost.
This is assuming there isn't a good reason why we might want some percentage of the population to be rural. To have farms and ranches, for example.
Farmers and ranches don’t need any more incentive to live there on top of the boatload of money they make selling their produce
Sure, if we restrict the subsidy to farmers and others where we need them to live in rural areas, that's fine.