Germany apparently has a system where a large city includes smaller neighboring towns under its umbrella. They are called Ortsteil, and I gather they get their municipal services from the larger town to avoid unnecessary duplication and to ensure that even small villages of hundreds or a few thousand people are well run.

Now, the U.S. is much more spread out, but maybe something similar could be arranged.

It is! These places are insanely costly, but that's secondary to what they do to people, imo. If you grow up here at a base level you will not have the full breadth of human experience; you'll probably never experience real community, you'll never experience other cultures or people (not even nationalities, you'll never even experience separate cliques or niches), you'll never have economic mobility (although that's rare regardless), you're basic services will always be in question. The list could continue on and on with various economic or humanitarian problems, and i don't even have that much experience to compare it to.

Ultimately it makes lesser people. paranoid, self obsessed, isolationist, violent, or addicted people. it's no coincidence that Republicans only really dominate in rural places.