To Live in Orbit or on a Planet - Role of Space Elevator

Never once had the idea of people living on the surface of the moon or Mars occur to me when I wrote six novels on the subject.  It simply did not make sense.  Instead, the space colonists would live on great space stations that hovered in orbit, with the surface left to mining and other such toil.  With the prohibitive costs of the Space Launch System in their current form, at this point in my thinking I understand the need to integrate the space elevator to the discussion.  While preparing for a show entitled, I would rather live in space, I stumbled on something well known in the science community but new to me and possibly new to you.  It was the idea of the space elevator.  I had dismissed the notion just weeks earlier in favor of more well known concepts, but now this discussion can no longer be ignored.