Rural poverty

I was debating what to post on, rural poverty or infrastructure and budget surpluses...I have more unfinished business with rural poverty.
I would guess that most rural places are on the lower end of the wealth scale. Unless the "rural" place is on the outer each of ever-expanding suburbs, it is probably poor, because of lack of opportunity. I am trying to get to the idea that rural areas are inherently poor because of their lack of economic development, but have not figured out the right way yet. Because rural areas lack a large service industry, most of the jobs are in agriculture or resource extraction. The resources are not very valuable, if they were, then they area would develop beyond rural. Or the area is unlivable. Example, near oil wells in many areas it is rural because of pollution from the extraction, or the harsh conditions surrounding the extraction. What I wish to discuss is how to have rural areas not mired in poverty?
This post is getting out of hand as I contemplate high pop. density rural areas vs. low pop.density areas. High pop. dense areas that are rural because the lack of investment for a "city"to grow. This would consist of families in small single story homes close together with a large distance to the closest urban area. Other areas would just not have many people. My main focus will be on the more dense "trapped" areas. By trapped I mean that they cannot exact the cycle of poverty on their own because of poor farming conditions and/or lack of industrial or service opportunities. People are living in areas that have no chance of endogeneously becoming more than poverty stricken.
How do you improve these areas? Just move the people. "Hey, the land stinks. Why are you living here? Just give it up and move to an area that has potential and let nature retake this area." That would be an interesting experiment, but people are too attached to....just about everything to let it go. Though, China moving a couple million people to construct the Three Gorges Dam is very similar to this scenario. I respect the idea of moving people to accomplish a possibly, the jury is still out, worthy goal. But, it was the chinese govt. simply s***ting on people with no real political power. People should not live in disaster prone areas and expect the govt. to protect (new orleans sucks) them and bail them out.
I will continue this tomorrow, as I got nowhere today.