Have progressives largely abandoned the concerns of rural Americans?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Just something that came to mind in an Atlasia debate.  No, I'm not concern trolling.  But for a while I've heard, people, usually the more liberal types, view the cities as a beacon of progress in spite of their imperfections and in spite of the fact that not every single person in America wants to live in a large city or watch their small communities fall to urban expansion.  Nowadays we rarely hear about rural areas in the national news unless it's something involving natural disasters, the price of food going up, or some big politician is pandering to them to get support for an infrastructure bill.

That's just my take on it.  Hopefully the mood of this thread won't turn to, "Well, rural communities suck, so why should I care?"

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Just something that came to mind in an Atlasia debate.  No, I'm not concern trolling.  But for a while I've heard, people, usually the more liberal types, view the cities as a beacon of progress in spite of their imperfections and in spite of the fact that not every single person in America wants to live in a large city or watch their small communities fall to urban expansion.  Nowadays we rarely hear about rural areas in the national news unless it's something involving natural disasters, the price of food going up, or some big politician is pandering to them to get support for an infrastructure bill.

That's just my take on it.  Hopefully the mood of this thread won't turn to, "Well, rural communities suck, so why should I care?"

Well, those people who care about the bolded part should be making common cause with us urbanists; exurban sprawl is the common enemy of both pro-city and pro-small town people.  If you care about preserving the countryside and rural communities, it's best to be in favor of policies that favor dense urban living, so we don't have to metastasize- and likewise, those of us who prefer cities are indeed (even if we don't say it as often as perhaps we should) sensitive to the idea that we should be protecting farmland, historic downtowns, all that.  There are too many people in the world for everyone to live in the countryside; this country is going to be majority urban by necessity, and the countryside will fare best if those of us who live in metro areas live nearer the center of the area rather than the fringe.

Of course there are some people who live on the rural fringe that will welcome sprawl, because they see it as a way to "cash out" to development, and care not about the many things that can be lost in that rush.  To be perfectly honest I don't care to cater to those people, and wish that there was a stronger genuinely agrarian movement to counter their megaphone.

I guess there's also the issue of mining, logging, drilling, etc. which can also be a sticking point, and I'm not really sure what's the best way to handle that, except to say that it really needs to be considered as something separate from development fights.  I think here's when I bust out the Jane Jacobs and talk about how the wealth gained from resource extraction tends to universally be more ephemeral and exploitative than that gained in more diverse economies, so depending on it is counterproductive even before environmental concerns come into play.   I know that's an unsatisfactory answer; I struggle with trying to formulate something more positive that doesn't come across as pablum.

Point of inquiry: do most people prefer living in small towns?  Because, you're right in that there are too many people in the world for everyone to live in remote areas, but I don't think that's a big problem.  I can only speak from experience of course, but most people I've encountered tend to prefer large cities.

But, yes, most of the country will need to be urban by necessity, but the question is by how much.