The land below is the expensive part of housing in a city. Here in Bloomington, land just outside the city limits goes for around $10k/acre. Your traditional 2-3 bedroom family home will easily cost $100k.

As for a bike ride away being in town, that was my point. "You don't need to go to the middle of nowhere to live cheap." If you were referring to when I said a short ride into town, I meant going through the suburbs and into the downtown where people go and have fun here. Sorry for the confusion. Its interesting how different the definition of town/city change from place to place.