> much smaller and more recently developed countries
Like China?
Like China?
Leave Chinese cities and go into the countryside and there are primarily dirt roads.
If we consider "megacities", they are at 15 vs the US's two (NYC and LA) [2].
In fact this is interesting, because although its population is huge in terms of the rest of nations-- about "a full Brazil" bigger than all of North America, and Europe (including Russia) combined [4]-- to put things in another perspective, we're talking about a country that's just 4.3 times the size of the US [3], yet it has 10x more cities and 7x more megacities.
This makes me think it's less rural than the US, which probably yields more focus on cities and less investment in rural areas.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity
[3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+%2...
[4]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+china+-+...
Yes, like China.