Pew Research released a major rural vs urban study, and the headlines missed the best bits. Pew Research’s new social trends study has shown up in a lot of news stories with widely varying headlines. Pew themselves titled it “Americans Are Less Likely Than Before COVID-19 To Want To Live in Cities, More Likely To […]
Top 5 Rural and small town trends 2022
Who knows what trends will affect small and rural communities in 2022 and beyond? Not many trends pieces cover rural places. These trends are specifically about rural and small towns. I’ve been following rural trends and writing about them since 2009. My trends reports have been commissioned or quoted by Main Street America, Emergent Research, the […]
What makes a small town a micropolitan or nanopolitan?
Quick Summary: A “micropolitan area” is US term for smaller metropolitan areas between 10,000 and 50,000 people. Micropolitans provide shopping and services to their core population and even more rural people in surrounding regions. About 27 million US residents live in micropolitan towns. Nanopolitans are towns with between 1,000 and 10,000 people. Nanopolitans serve as […]
Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns
People have been saying for years that they would prefer to live in rural areas. Trulia research in 2014 showed 7% more people wanted to live in rural places than did then. In 2018, Gallup asked people where they preferred to live. Rural came out on top for all age groups except for 18-29 year olds. With the 18-29 […]
