> This analysis, for whatever it's worth, is wrestling with a straw man.

More like a straw army.

Austin is surrounded by empty flat land. San Francisco is surrounded by water and was built out many decades ago.

London suffers from being the main city in Britain. The UK is overcentralized. Most of the money and power are in London. Some countries are centralized like that, with all the good stuff around the national capital. France, Japan, and Russia are; the US, Canada, and China are not. (China, maybe; too much is near Beijing, but there are lots of other big cities.)