the "need".

Do we really need to be jammed together to all get in our cars at the same time to go do work that nobody actually needs done? All the while putting people so close together they can't help irritating each other and leading to social conflict that would have been avoided with distance.

Anyhow, exploiting thermal mass storage of dirt and rocks is something that doesn't mean you can't build tall structures, it just means you probably will spend more on such materials. Cheap building materials like concrete are not good heat stores, whereas certain kinds of rocks are very good, mostly related to the content of metals inside them, and their ability to hold that without expanding so much that they weather fast and break down.