Space habitats are a completely untested and purely theoretical technology of which we don't even know how to build and imo often falls back on extreme handwavium about how easy and superior they are to planet-living. I find such a notion laughable because all I ever see either on this sub or on other such communities is people taking the best-case, rosiest scenarios for habitat building, combining it with a dash of replicating robots (where do they get energy and raw materials and replacement parts?), and then accusing people who don't think like them of "planetary chauvinism". Everything works perfectly in theory, it's when rubber meets the road that downsides manifest and you can actually have a true cost-benefit discussion about planets vs habitats.

Well, given that Earth is the only known habitable place in the Universe and has demonstrated an incredibly robust ability to function as a heat sink, resource base, agricultural center, and living center with incredibly spectacular views, why shouldn't sci-fi people tend towards "planetary chauvinism" until space habitats actually prove themselves in reality and not just niche concepts? Let's make a truly disconnected sustained ecology first, measure its robustness, and then talk about scaling that up. Way I see it, if we assume the ability to manufacture tons of space habitats, we should assume the ability to at the least terraform away Earth's deserts and turn the planet into a superhabitable one.

As a further aside, any place that has to manufacture its air and water is a place that's going to trend towards being a hydraulic empire and authoritarianism if only to ensure that the system keeps running.