Meanwhile most of the houses were perfectly nice and respectable mid-century ranch and 2-story houses, which would probably be listed for a few hundred thousand in other states, being listed for millions of dollars. Elsewhere the city was full of strip malls with faded signs next to newly constructed buildings. We went to watch a movie there and it was surreal seeing all the closed and half-empty storefronts in this sprawling space with almost no one inside, and imagining how it used to be full of people and shops but was now a ghost town, while a few blocks away was one of the richest corporations in the world.
When I visited a few years ago Apple's sprawling mega-complex corporate headquarters were still being built, and down the road was what was essentially an abandoned mall (Vallco), which I understand has now been completely demolished.
I'm going to go a little against the grain here and mention a city that isn't rural and is in fact quite wealthy overall: Cupertino, California, the home of Apple.