Sounds like they modeled themselves after Detroit, gotta love those dems.
I typically try not to get involved in us v. them, libs v. reps debates, because they never go anywhere. And so, this isn't a comment attempting to initiate a debate.
I'll say this though, you may or may not be under the impression that somehow, out in the boonies, out in the wide-open, wonderful countryside, that life somehow becomes better and the people equally so. Perhaps this could even what we might consider "conservative" country. "Red State country," even.
To disengage one from such a romanticization of this particular world, I'll say that I grew up in such a world. In my late teens and early 20s, I interned with my home county's DA office, thinking I might be a lawyer eventually.
The things I learned during that internship forever changed my perception of the good, down home world around me. Fathers and mothers who would rape their own daughters together; families who would sit out on their back porch drinking beer while the sheriff was in the front yard collecting the brain matter from their son, who had just blown his head off out in the yard; Janes and Johns who would slit their opposite's throat; families who would play Russian Roulette, have one of them blow his brains out, and then tell the sheriff, "Haha! The dumbass just shot 'emself." And those just to name a few. This all in a county about 1/30th the population of Davidson.
Point is, cities draw our attention because they're a mass concentration of humanity, and we can see all this humanity, in all its grossness right out in the open. This doesn't mean, however, that cesspools don't lurk beneath the surface in places that may seem perfectly wonderful and at bliss.
I'm sure I was in a wonderful neighborhood but I was not going to find out if that was true.
