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Horizon's Threequel Can't Cut Corners On Its Hub Towns for One Key Reason
Horses and more specifically horseback riding, carriages, etc. In RDR2, and the timeline it is set set in, are facts of life.
Machine riding in the Horizon franchise is something that was unique to Aloy. Only through Sylens' intervention were Regala and her rebels able to achieve. The Zenith, while able to override and manipulate the machines, had no need to ride them. Creating settlements to accommodate Aloy and her singular ability to ride machines, as GRMember noted, would open these relatively fragile places and their vulnerable inhabitants to constant danger. Camps outside of major centres acknowledge this risk and do what can be done to mitigate it. Also, consider the difference in industrialization between RDR2's setting and HZD and HZD:FW, plus the environmental constraints(massive predatory machines) construction on the scale of Saint Denis, or the openness of Valentine just wouldn't be possible in the HZD world. Not to mention the philosophical difference between the two civilizations, except maybe the Oseram whose cities we have not seen, one minimalist and in harmony with nature, the other to subjugate and transform. This alone leads to vastly different approaches to meeting the needs of the inhabitants of a population centre.
Bit of a rant, but no, being able to ride your clawstrider through Scalding Spear or even Meridian has no place in the setting of the first two HZD installments. The technological leap that would be required to "domesticate" the machines of the world for HZD:3 to make riding them common enough to construct settlements to accommodate this for player convenience is, I believe, an unlikely direction for Guerrilla to take the existing world. But only time will tell where Aloy's travels will take her and what she'll encounter on the way.
Happy Gaming.