Comment by eigenspace

It doesn't just make sense in the very far north, it makes sense just about anywhere that you'd have many people living close together (i.e. even a village).

Most homes don't need to have their own electricity generators, their own sewage treatment systems, or their own water wells, they hook into utility infrastructure.

In a lot of european towns and cities, heat is also a utility you can hook into, e.g. my apartment has no heating infrastructure in it, we just get all of our heat through a pipe connected to a nearby heat reservoir that's primarily loaded with waste heat from a gas power turbine. Within the next couple years though, the heat from gas power will be supplemented with the biggest heat pump in the world though [1]

It's not just a city thing though, I have friends who live in a village of 300 people in the Alps and they also have a utility district heating system in the village.

[1] https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-details/...