[sofixa]

You seem to be conflating rich and poor and rural and urban, which have very little relation. Singapore was very poor, baring some rich businessmen, mostly Chinese IIRC, and had ethic tensions to boot between the Chinese, Malay and Indian populations it had ( one of the main reasons it was expelled from Malaysia).

[cunthorpe]

New York was also very poor, barring some rich businessmen. You have to look at it relatively to its surrounding. Of course there were poor people too, but they lived in the “suburbs”, not in the middle of deserts like, say, in the US.