What would represent a larger total social...

What would represent a larger total social, economic and scientific effort - sending a sustainably large group of colonists to a stellar system, say, 50 light years away or reshaping Mars/Venus/asteroids/moons into a bunch of pleasant little Earth clones?

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That's an interesting question. One of the more reasonable ones I've seen on Veeky Forums.
You can't lump all those bodies together. Different techniques and time scales for each.

However, if an interstellar slowboat moved at, say, 2 percent of lightspeed, 50 LY is 2500 years of travel. I've no idea what our capabilities will be in 2500 years. Could Pericles have imagined our civilization? I believe some things, like FTL travel, will always be impossible but short of that I wouldn't know where to put the limits on what can be done.
I'd say we could terraform Mars before 4500 AD -- provided we have the incentive to expend the resources AND we don't wipe ourselves out first.

>sending a sustainably large group of colonists to a stellar system, say, 50 light years away
You should define better large and sustainable in terms of numbers.
And there is also the minor problem we don't have such technology in the slightest, so how could you evaluate it?

Okay, I'll narrow the terms of the thought experiment.

Let's say a near-perfect exoplanet is discovered orbiting Nu2 Lupi, a sunlike star 48 light years away, and 4,000 people are sent there to strike up camp.

Or alternatively, to geoengineer another Earth in our own solar system, be it a terraformed Venus or Mars or even an entirely new planet built "from scratch" and NOT an life-support dependent cylinder station. Basically a place that should remain habitable to humans in regular clothes for millions of years without any further terraforming input.

The point I'm getting at is, given the absurd stellar distances, is making other Earths simpler than reaching them?

Alpha/Proxima Centauri vs Mars.

Those stars are close enough to get to in a few generations.

Making Oneil cylinders at earth moon Lagrange points is the simplest solution.

Yeah, but an Oneill cylinder isn't truly habitable, it requires constant maintenance and resupply. In theory a terraformed planet should be as "naturally" habitable as Earth is

Those cylinders wouldn't be more life-support dependent then living on a planet is. Instead of getting your ressources from other parts of your planet, you would get it from asteroids. This actually has several advantages compared to earth.

If you want to live in a place that is identical to earth, why not stay at earth?

It would also be under 100% human control in every aspect including gravity. You could increase or decrease it as you like, and natural disasters or anything can't happen there.

>let's just conveniently ignore lacking gravity for human physiology, lacking gravity for an atmosphere and lacking magnetosphere for an atmosphere

Also by the time we're able to terraform planets we'll be so advanced that we don't have to choose between terraforming and interstellar travel anymore.

More likely we'll hang around the asteroid belt in rotating rings and do some robotic mining.