As a non-American, I’m very confused by this. If it’s a town, it’s not rural by definition. Because, you-know, it’s urban.
Also, could we get a definition of town vs small town. Do you not have the concept of a village? (Village in the UK would be a settlement with a population of a couple of thousand, with usually a pub, local shop, maybe a post office and primary school if you’re lucky).
They’re still cities, but people tend to start calling them “rural” when you get a certain distance from the big cities and things spread out, often also near farmland and/or nature.
For example, this would probably count as rural.
The town by my camp is about that size, 900 souls, and that includes a great deal of surrounding area. We have a general store/gas station, restaurant, mechanic, hair place (still open?), Post Office, fire station (unmanned I think?), two churches, halfway house, tiny school of some sort and a Dollar General, two “cities” 20-miles in either direction. Most of those 900 souls are in the surrounding country.
I would think this is OP’s definition of “village”. There are smaller places in between those two cities, but Holt is the “big” one.
OP: We don’t use the term “village” in America. “Small town” can be a confusing term as that may mean what I described, or it might mean 30,000 people in a suburb attached to a larger town. Or, it might mean any amount of people at all. 🤷🏻
That’s different from anything I’ve seen in the UK. Every house seems to be surrounded with lawns and so spread out, and yet you still need whatever that giant building with the green roof and car park is. Presumably a shop? Why’d you need such a big building for so few people? And why are all the houses detached with no terraces? Very strange…
(All of that was rhetorical, I’m sure it makes sense if that’s what you’re used to. And having more room to spread out and less history to deal with)
Hyperindividualism and car culture explains it all. Americans don’t trust each other (especially not their neighbors) and want to put as much distance between themselves as possible. We’re also mostly NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) and have very strict zoning laws that prevent commercial and residential buildings from coexisting in the same area. This is great for the auto industry because it means you can’t do anything without driving, and they lobby the government to block any attempt to change things.
Our suburbs are liminal spaces that more closely resemble purgatory than actual communities, which is why everyone who grew up in them is at least slightly insane.
That’s an American “Town.”