I live in Unincorporated Palm Beach County. Since I’m not technically in any Village Town or City, I voted rural. Actually, we are almost rural as we are on the outskirts. Unincorporated Palm Beach County had 661,416 residents in 2022.
I was going to say somewhere around 300,000 but it’s ballooned to 400,000 in just 10 years with no end in sight
Boon docks for me. Good flashlight territory.
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We used to be quite rural. Three seasonal (spring thru fall) neighbors within 1/4+ mile, other side of a ridge. Closest all year residents 15 minutes away on dirt and gravel. Closest stores 45 minutes away, or longer in winter.
We were surrounded by US national forest. About 2 years ago my concerns about wildfires reached a point where we decided to list the property for sale. We sold it 6 months later. 5 months later a wildfire started a little ways south of the property. On a day with 65 mph wind gusts and very dry conditions the fire north and east rapidly.
Our old place burned to the ground. No way to be certain but I think some new construction that had been started may have given the fire a place to get a toe-hold. The old exterior was fire resistant cement fiber siding materials, metal roof, etc. In any event though at least 95% of the trees were burnt or fried dead from the heat.
So the move to town was well timed for us. So score one point for not living in the middle of nowhere.
Then, a week ago I had my first ever Afib event (atrial fibrillation) Heart racing very fast. My wearable device was indicating 140 - 150 beats per minute. It felt like I had a vibrator for a heart. I asked Karen and our son to take me to the ER. Hospital is 8/10 of a mile away. Everything went well. Small town with a good hospital. One other patient in ER. No wait. 1 PM.
IV administered drug slowed heart rate. I had a multitude of tests. Nothing alarming in any, but my high BP had crept up. My fault for not doing a better job of self monitoring. A change in meds was made and I was allowed to leave the next day at Noon.
I feel good. Score another point (or two) for living near a hospital and not away in the forest 45 minutes distant on a good day. I must add that the distance from the old home to hospital was a factor we considered when thinking about moving. But wildfire danger had been in mind for a number of years and was a big factor.
So for me, at this point, I like my small town better than the boonies.
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Don, so glad you were able to dodge that wildfire, talk about timing. Good thing to be near a hospital. I’m not getting any younger either and I’m glad I’m just maybe 10 minutes from our closest hospital.
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For me the biggest issue with rural that can’t realistically be resolved is the travel time between that stuff, and while I’m sure there are people who are like me in some cases, in general people like me are more likely to be found in cities, and I just like a lot of variety, I wouldn’t always want to go to the same bar and talk to the same people, and I’m more of a hackerspace and queer-friendly bar person than a church person 
The main plus of rural areas is that property is cheap, but I still feel I want some density, I don’t want the nearest person to be a car trip away. I also work remotely and need a quality internet connection to do that.
100% agreed !@#$ HOAs though, just a way for Karens to be Karens, and I honestly hate the whole suburbia thing. Definitely something rural people and actual city people agree on, suburbs just seem miserable. For me, I want the kind of mixed-use place where there’s shops, all the buildings don’t look the same, if someone near me decides to paint their house purple, cool, adds character to the area, and if I see someone working on their car, I’m more likely to start a conversation about cars than complain as long as they aren’t utterly taking the piss like powersanding off some old paint at 3am.
Rural and love it. When I have to shop I go to a town of 14K which is too congested for me. Would rather be in the ground than live in a town/city.
Thanks for the poll Don. I have always wondered that about the people here.
The point of HOAs is to preserve home value - a tracing paper thin façade over extracting more taxes apt to exceed whatever premium you’d realize on eventual sale of the home.
As can no small percentage of suburbanites. Unfortunately suburbia is a strong majority of the housing stock in the country - even in core citites and we’re seemingly in no hurry to surrender the white picket fences cultural trophy.