Not to say anything about networking, which is critical for most arts.
Going out into the sticks, while calming and healing for the soul, is artistic suicide.
These days internet and digital production can ease a lot of the rural isolation. But for many (most?) people it is essential to be in and around the art scene to be able to create and maintain focus and motivation to work on their art. Especially when starting a career it is important to meet and see other artists and art.
Nonetheless your final point is far more vapid because the frontier is where civilization is created and destroyed. It is where norms, values and modes of production of some civilization are placed with decreasing amounts of their domestic support, and usually in increasing conflict with a different civilization, so that it becomes clear what aspects have some more fundamental truth or at least robustness, and what is simply town and gown, responding to the ever shifting attentions of easily bored patrons.