No apologies necessary. Your reply was instructive, and I appreciate that a lot.
I can’t be sure, but it sounds like you are describing exurbs, not small towns. The difference is important.
Since exurbs are further away from city centers, they may appear like small towns, but they cannot support themselves. As a result, exurbs remain economically, socially and politically dependent on cities. Put differently, large cities dominate the economies, politics, public services and social services, for hundreds, often thousands, of square miles all around them – which often includes many suburbs and exurbs, raw land, farms, ranches, mines, etc.
However, just like cities, small towns are incorporated and independent jurisdictions capable of supporting their own local governments. While cities serve large populations living in high density developments, small towns serve small populations living on hundreds, even hundreds of thousands of acres of undeveloped land (by undeveloped, I mean land that is not covered in black top, cement, buildings, roads, parking lots, etc.). Where city people see raw land, rural people see our businesses. No different than a barber shop, restaurant, or office building in a city, in rural America, the land is our business.
I cannot know, but I suspect the circumstances you describe are the result of exurban residents who do not understand they are St. Louis dependents, not independent towns. Housing developments, even those with a few strip malls, cannot support local government. Without local government, people have no control over development in their exurb. The city of St. Louis decides what can and cannot be built in its’ exurbs, and what services will or will not be offered, including roads, schools, hospitals, housing, commercial buildings, police, fire services, internet, and cell phone towers… etc.
The more suburbs and exurbs cities allow to be built within their jurisdictions, the higher the cost of providing services to those residents. In order to provide even basic services in suburbs and exurbs, cities transfer money out of older areas of the city, where poorer and minority populations live and work. The result is a decline in the once self-sustaining older parts of the city, and an increase in subsidized/dependent suburbs and exurbs.
The only way cities can increase revenue from suburbs and exurbs is to increase business development within them. This creates resentment, friction, and lots of anger because suburban and exurban residents hate losing their “rural” feeling lifestyle to large factories, cheap office buildings, strip malls, car lots, ugly warehouses, and freeways etc.
