Enhancing the quality of life in rural areas was inscribed as one of the three core policy objectives for EU’s 2007–13 rural development. In small rural towns, conservation and upgrading of the local heritage became an important part of that objective, to a large extent mediated through the concept of revitalization. Understood contemporarily as granting a place its lost values, to be effective, revitalization must go hand in hand with the intellectual process of restoring memory. In regard to ruralized towns dating back to Middle Ages (or being later morphological derivatives of), such restoration is largely vested in the historical element – their urban past. Therefore, the intent of revitalization in this particular context is often that of visually enhancing or restoring the towns’ deteriorating urban character. However, despite good intentions, many such projects may strike as feeble, uncoordinated, unnecessary and even pernicious, often as a result of deficient knowledge and/or understanding of the local context, particularly in terms of historicity. With a visual approach to “lesser urbanity”, this explorative paper combines theory and field observations to encapsulate the problematic nature of public space in environments where “urbanity” has a clear cultural foundation. It aligns small-town centers with certain conceptual foundations which in this context are indispensable for imparting an unambiguous air of urbanity that is culturally acquired and therefore expected. It also takes into account factors such as scale and residuality, arguing that lege artis implementation of highly urban traits within extremely underpopulated and/or heavily ruralized towns is confusing to the locals and therefore questionable. The purpose of such presentation is, partly, to reveal the real-life conditions of small-town centers in light of the assumptions of revitalization, and, partly, to spawn a discussion on how they could be organized by adding alternative perspectives to the aesthetic/functional discourse currently impregnating trends and policies in urban design.