Small towns

Time - Small municipalities and rural towns have faced the opposite issue from large cities: instead of the fear of decline, they are experiencing a sudden resurgence of new residents, businesses, development, and investment. In many cases, this influx has revived downtowns and Main Streets that were struggling for many decades. New York State’s Hudson River Valley, which extends 300 miles north from New York City, is a prime example of this. The small cities of Beacon, Kingston, and Hudson all had successful industrial economies before they declined and depopulated. Since the early 2000s, each has recovered with new residents and retail businesses. But, while these sound like positive additions at first glance, even success has consequences.

Believe it or not, there are a lot more small places than large ones in the United States. Out of the approximately 20 thousand incorporated places in the U.S., only 311 have more than 100 thousand residents, while 52% of people who live in an incorporated “city” do so in one with fewer than 250 thousand residents. Yet, small places face many of the same issues that large ones do, including economic and population declines.

When middle-class and wealthy urbanites leave large cities for smaller ones on urban peripheries or in rural hinterlands, they often encounter places that have seen better days. Economic shifts like the decline of manufacturing, regulations on extraction industries like logging, mining, and fishing, and the rise of large-scale agribusinesses have reshaped everyday life for people in small towns and rural areas. Since the late 20^th century, many of these places have seen major and independent businesses close, housing deteriorate, and young residents leave for better opportunities elsewhere, particularly to large cities.