1/3 of my expenses are related to living in Boston. Rent is 2/3 of my total expenses, and 1/2 of my rent is only because of the city I live in, if I chose a cheaper city or lived 15 minutes further away, I could have the same house for 1/2 the rent. Of the remaining 1/3 expenses, many of those are cost-of-living related as well.
Location is something that's never really going to get cheaper, because location is fundamentally scarce. You can have as many cities as you want, but you can only have 1 SF, 1 Boston, etc. I don't want to live in a city, I want to live in Boston. And that's expensive compared to other cities around the world.
I think this is a testament to how cheap technology has made our lives. 100 years ago, things like clothes and food were a much more significant part of lifetime expenses. And as technology continues to improve, location is going to continue to eat up a larger portion of total expenses.
Other advances include new construction techniques making it cheaper to build taller buildings. ie prefabs or 3D printing