I've never lived in any big city. Literally never. Not even close, always 20+ minutes away from the major city.
The thing is: suburbia itself is a network of smaller cities. Buies Creek has no "smaller city" near it. Buies Creek IS the city.
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To continue your Atherton example... Atherton is a suburb of ___Palo Alto___, not a suburb of San Fran. It is a brisk 4-mile bike-ride from Atherton to Palo Alto and back, you don't even need a car if you live in Atherton and commute to Palo Alto.
There's NOTHING walking or biking distance to Buies Creek, NC. Rural is more about "distance from nearest metro".
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Buies Creek NC is 40-minutes to Raleigh. This is rural by my experience. True, Buies Creek NC is "less Rural" for people who are used to 2-hour drives (Coulee City to Spokane), but a 40-minute drive away from a big city is Rural by most people's definition of Rural.
lol - this is so disconnected from how anyone who lives a truly rural lifestyle would think of it.
20 minutes is a joke! Living multiple hours away is considered more standard.
Yeah - for a person who is adjusted to only living in big cities then sure. However, Buies Creek is 30 minutes away from the downtown of a city. It is not rural by almost anyone else's definition.
It'd be like saying Atherton, CA is rural because it's a "smaller" town of 7k people. Ignoring that it's within a 8 million population metro and within 30-45 minutes of a 1 million population sprawling city (San Jose) and another 800k+ densely populated one (San Francisco).