I grew up mostly in a fairly exurban area, although we didn't call it that then. Basically it was in what was then the outer ring of the suburbs. There were still plenty of smalls farms around, since developed into more housing or large office campuses for Big Pharma.
Some people just moved there for the usual reason - it was cheaper - but some moved because they had jobs they needed to commute to but wanted to live in a "rural" area. So a regular occurrence was that recent arrivals to a new housing development, built on what was recently farmland, would do what they could do stop housing from being built on the neighboring farms.
In the urban hellhole I see a somewhat similar dynamic with gentrifiers against gentrification.
