Terrific article! I'm looking forward to your journey. I suspect the economics of smaller homes work better in an urban setting where lots of smaller homes could benefit from proximity to bulk infrastructure such as water, electricity and Internet, not to mention waste management (there may be some developments in the US which already have waste to energy solutions - certainly the Swedes cracked that years ago). Proximity to the bulk supply, or major distribution lines, means that the connection to the home isn't as long, therefore shouldn't be as expensive. That's pretty much a question of cost of materials and labour on the part of the municipality or utility. Communities that figure out how to share infrastructure benefit from a lower cost of infrastructure.

If you'd really like to do the rural/not too far away from friends and services thing, maybe you could look into an energy/water efficient and self-sufficient house - one with solar water heating, solar power (still expensive if you want the whole house, not just a couple of light bulbs and a toaster), perhaps gas for cooking, and grey water recycling (assuming you pay rates for water). Ultimately those houses cost a lot less to run than those that run on conventional utilities, but the economics and finance of it - the local capex/opex balance - has to work for you There may be communities where they've built houses like this already...not sure. How this helps!