My experience as college-educated white dude from a dying rural town is that cities have more opportunity, more interesting things to do, and less blatant racism/misogyny/xenophobia (or at least more people calling it out for what it is). If my family owned tons of acres maybe I'd be happy to be a farmer back home, but as is my grandparents lost their land leases decades ago, and there's about a total of three cities in Kansas that employ programmers. I've lived in most of them, and they're nothing compared to Denver.