How did the progressive movement differ between the urban centers of the northern states and the more rural South? What accounts for these differences?

The Progressive Movement in the United States had its origins in the intellectual and philosophical Age of Enlightenment (Age of Reason) in eighteenth-century Europe—when the importance of science and reason began to eclipse the mandates of religion and the ideals of social equality and progress for all began to make their way into the public consciousness.
The early twentieth-century Progressive Movement in the United States espoused some elements of this philosophy, with an emphasis on curbing the power of corporations and re-evaluating the role of the agricultural sector in the nation's progress. New social concerns came into place with the rapid industrialization of cities, the mass migration of workers from rural to urban areas, and the need to put checks and balances on the excesses of industry. For the agriculture-based southern states, the Progressive Movement promoted ideas of modernization that were not generally welcomed in a society still reeling from the changes brought about by the Civil War.
President Theodore Roosevelt came to be seen as a fore-runner in the Progressive Movement due to his corporate trust-busting actions. On the rural front, he established the Commission on Country Life, which was tasked with gathering statistics and making recommendations for modernization to farmers—who did not take well to what they saw as interference in their affairs and a paternalistic attitude from government representatives who knew little about the realities of farming life.
The beginning of the twentieth century was still a time of transition from the social upheaval brought to the country by the Civil War—especially for the South. The urban centers of the northern states had long been industrialized and had cultural attitudes and societal needs more aligned with the goals of the Progressive Movement than the rural South did. The southern states still maintained a predominantly agrarian culture, though it was only a shadow of its former antebellum self. Still suspicious of government interference in their long-held way of life, the rural South did not take well to the reformist ideas of the Progressive Movement.