In much of the western US, urbanization has plowed straight through rural hinterlands (which were often small in any case due to how western cities are so close to mountains) and into forested/brushy terrain. People like the feeling of living out in the forest. Heck, I can sympathize, probably favorite area to move to if I wasn't tied to a job would be the eastern slopes of the Cascade mountains -- mostly ponderosa pine with some juniper. Wet enough to have a huge fuel load with those big trees, but dry enough to be extremely fire prone. Ideally you get frequent small fires that clear the understory but don't torch the big fire-resistant pines, but even those small fires are plenty capable of burning your house down. If you want to live in that kind of country with low fire risk, you need 50 or 100' of bare gravel separating your house from vegetation. Not many of the new migrants choose to live safely....
Current Events » in reply to Vegetation clearance
Ditto here