Rural vs suburban vs urban modelling

[Tyson Rayles]

"The only option I suppose I left out is "wilderness", since arguably some terrain is not really rural, even it it is mostly empty."

Wilderness is empty? Spoken like a true city slicker! In real life wilderness is the only scenery worth looking at. Having grown up in an urban area I got sick of the ghetto real quick and moved out to the middle of nowhere (Pete can attest to this as he has been here) and prefer rural scenery. My layout is based on where I now live but I can see the appeal of urban scenery for those who love structure modeling. That said I have seen loads of layouts that had wonderful structures but because the ground covers/water/bushes and trees were so poorly done the layout didn't look very good.
My other comment on urban scenery is that most layouts I've seen that were urban the whole layout was that way so it looked like the trains seem to come from nowhere and went nowhere but just run around in circles inside the city limits. In real life shippers wouldn't use trains for that they would use trucks .