I think a reasonable variation on that strategy is for a bunch of people to "move out to the country" all at once, and in roughly the same place. I.e. bootstrap a new city. It'd take a high level of coordination to pull it off successfully though. Ideally they would move somewhere not in a flood plain and not subject to a substantially higher risk of natural disasters (or the not-entirely-natural disasters brought on by climate change). Part of the reason we have a shortage of housing in cities that people want to live in is that we have a shortage of cities that people want to live in.
Otherwise, just moving to the country just means you're dependent on infrastructure in different ways. You might be able to grow your own food if you had to, which is an option city people don't really have. That's worth something.