The spousal unit and I lived in Pflugerville 1968-1970 while I was in grad school at TU. Lovely little town. Attended church in Round Rock, another nice place 'way back then. When we'd head east to visit her family we'd take US 79 and enjoy the scenery and little towns along the way to Shreveport. Once in awhile, if the family finances permitted, we'd return home by Leslie's Chicken Shack in Waco. Austin was, what, 250,000 people back then? Something like that.
John Henry Newman said, "Growth is the only sign of life." That's certainly true of villages, towns and cities. The Pflugerville of our past is...well, passed. It's now a suburb, part of the "Greater Austin Area," or whatever they call it. Whatever became of Thorndale? Gause? Easterly? They were not exactly thriving when we made our last road trip to the in-laws' place the other side of Bossier, I'm pretty sure they're not prospering nowadays. But those are the signs, the side-effects of human progress as we know it. The race moves on, leaving one thing behind in favor of something bigger, newer and therefore ostensibly better. Metropolitan areas draw in virtually all elements of a society and concentrate them geographically so they are more obvious, more visible, more attention-worthy, regardless of their beauty or lack of it. The progress of human civilization accelerated as gatherers became farmers, who became merchants, who became city dwellers.
While a goodly number of us may wish for at least a partial return to bucholism as we selectively remember it, human civilization inexorably moves us towards urbanism. Is it good? bad? desirable? inevitable? Yes, it is all of those, since no advances are ever made without some degree of loss or sacrifice.