Hot take: Most people who live in rural places absolutely shouldn't and we'd be better off societally if they'd all move to urban areas or densify their area in order to urbanize.

Some rural people are fine. My uncle lives about 20km outside the nearest town. He's almost self-sufficient, grows or hunts most of his food, uses solar for electricity, real retire-to-a-cabin-in-the-woods type stuff. He goes into town maybe once every 1-2 months for supplies. That's alright by me.

My parents, however, live a few kilometers down the road from him. They both work in town, and drive there separately more often than not because of conflicting schedules. Even on their days off, they'll go to town for errands, or social events, or whatever. Sometimes they'll do the 20km drive to town and back multiple times a day. If they do it three times, that's 120km. This is ridiculous, harmful and unsustainable. I don't have any statistics on this, but I'd be willing to bet most "rural" folks are like my parents. They're actually urbanites who just happen to live rurally. If over half your life happens in town, you should live in town. Whatever reasons people have for wishing to live in a rural place should not outweigh the huge environmental cost of having to drive everywhere all the time. Not to mention the massive amount of resources and subsidies necessary to maintain car-centric infrastructure compared to literally any other type of transit.