A rural infrastructure differs in many ways from urban infrastructure. While publicly controlled assets critical to human survival exist in rural areas much as they do in urban areas, transport and utilities tend to be much less extensive and relied on less by residents. Other municipal services may also be reduced, e.g. nature's services may be relied upon for potable water drawn from private wells, while other private infrastructural capital, e.g. a dam or canal or irrigation ditch, may be relied upon instead of public means of water diversion and supply. There may also be much more reliance on community emergency response teams such as volunteer fire fighters .

As in urban areas, infrastructure in this sense still includes:

• Transport
  • Roads
  • Highways
  • Railroads
  • Public transport
  • Airports especially in remote areas depending on air freight
  • Health systems and especially transport to reach them
  • River freight
  • Bike paths and sidewalks though these may be rare or nonexistent
• Utilities
  • Electricity
  • Natural gas
  • Coal delivery
  • Water supply
  • Sewers
  • Telephone service
  • Radio and television bandwidth allocation
  • Cable service
• Municipal services
  • Trash collection
  • Police protection
  • Fire protection
  • Flood protection
  • Postal system
  • Minting and backing currency

• "Soft Infrastructure" is a term that denotes institutions that maintain the health and cultural standards of the population. Principally, this refers to
  • Public education
  • Public health systems including public hospitals

The process of expanding the above, especially in developing nations, is called rural development .

Efforts to build sustainable rural infrastructure are often differentiated from generic municipal sustainability efforts due to the different problems that rural areas face.