Everywhere was once rural(ish - depending on how far back you want to go).
Nothing you're saying is wrong, but it belies the point.
At some point, someone has to do the investment that makes a place appealing. I'm not saying "everyone should live like current rural residents".
I'm saying the investment that should be happening is "take a rural space and make a medium/high density area". Usually by creating a foundational lynchpin for income (ex: battery factory, chip factory, etc) and encouraging remote work.
> Pushing more people into areas with few opportunities just exacerbates this problem.
Pushing more people into areas with few opportunities creates opportunities in those areas.
I've lived most of my life in rural areas. People are leaving these communities in droves because of the lack of opportunity. It's folly to think sending more people back to them will make them somehow viable. I'm not convinced you can artificially create demand for housing folk in rural areas. China has been trying that for decades and the results are ghost cities.
Edit: To expand on this, the internet has killed rural communities. There's little to no need for corner stores which used to support these areas and hell you can get alcohol shipped to you as well so you dwindle down to a few bars. Maybe one hairdresser, but everyone knows someone's aunt who cuts hair out of her house. Same with an auto shop. There's maybe one attached to the only gas station in town. Most people know someone's uncle who can fix anything with a motor so there's little demand for more. There's just not enough people there to sustain the support community that would prosper from moving in. You can't artificially create either the supply side or the demand side in rural areas short of forced migrations and the supply side is unsustainable in these areas short of banning online orders or removing mail subsidies for shipped packages so that you can force more local commerce.
Forget about anything culturally divergent. Theaters require specific tastes which require a significant enough of a population to support performances outside of a churches Christmas pageant. Same with food. You'll get a few mom and pop shops one Mexican restaurant and maybe a Chinese restaurant if you're lucky. Otherwise it's chain stores like McDonald's and Pizza Hut. Oh and gas station pizza is popular. There just isn't a large enough of a population to support more eclectic food options. There's no draw to providing these services to a population too small to create a living off of.
And company towns aren't the solution either. Very, very few companies require enough people concentrated in an area to justify building a town much less a city around. And it's been shown time and time again that companies are perfectly willing to abandon areas when they can find more profit elsewhere. See the entire history of cities built around shipping and mining and logging and automotive construction being completely wiped out when the sole industries which supported them collapse or move elsewhere.
Nothing you're saying is wrong, but it belies the point.
At some point, someone has to do the investment that makes a place appealing. I'm not saying "everyone should live like current rural residents".
I'm saying the investment that should be happening is "take a rural space and make a medium/high density area". Usually by creating a foundational lynchpin for income (ex: battery factory, chip factory, etc) and encouraging remote work.
> Pushing more people into areas with few opportunities just exacerbates this problem.
Pushing more people into areas with few opportunities creates opportunities in those areas.