I'm mostly just talking about tax revenue versus public spending, since that's probably the easiest to get objective numbers for. But of course it's still going

I'm mostly just talking about tax revenue versus public spending, since that's probably the easiest to get objective numbers for. But of course it's still going to depend on where you draw the line between "urban" and "rural" (I would probably want to look at dense urban centers versus everything else). With a quick Google you can find a bunch of studies showing that urban areas subsidize rural areas as well as a bunch of articles "debunking" those studies, so I'm sure anyone can find the conclusion they were looking for. There is also subtler stuff that isn't exactly "subsidy" but is perhaps suggestive of societal conflict between urban and rural areas, for example vastly disproportionate political representation (in the United States).