AGreed, I've flown to Cali more than a few times, each time I am reminded how empty this country really is. There is a LOT of land out there, a lot we can expand into. We choose to bunch ourselves up into big cities for some reason. There is a lot of room out there to build more big cities, if someone would start one up. They say we are overpopulated, but then I look at how much space there really is out there we could fill.
Water. We can barely make one City of Las Vegas work.
I think leaving open space is a possitive thing anyway. There should be no need to expand there just because it is there. At some point the human population has to come to the realizaion that we cna not continue to expans un-ended without it bitting us in the butt latter.
I'd suggest, leaving the desolation just the way it is.