Recent research suggests that rural residents in the global North are happier than urban populations in the same countries. This goes against received wisdom in the field, where the opposite is usually assumed. Is quality of life better in the rural areas? How and under which circumstances is this the case? What can we learn from digging deeper into the rural-urban happiness paradox and which critical questions does this leave us with for the future? What might policymakers, planners, architects, and other decision-makers learn about how, when, and where to intervene? Rural quality of life delves deeper into these matters by asking what quality of life in rural areas is all about - in everyday life, through interventions in the built environment, in civil society and measures of subjective well-being.