Smaller cities and towns with a large amount of local businesses/commerce

[Sharif662]

Basically all or predominantly micropolitan areas will have this, especially the top ten most populous micropolitan areas.

[dbcook1]

These places seem to fit the bill:

Asheville
Savannah (though the recent gentrification of Broughton Street has pushed out a lot of local businesses here)
Burlington, VT
Boulder, CO
Charlottesville
Missoula
Traverse City
Ann Arbor
Bend, OR
Key West
Provincetown, MA

There are many others, but as another poster mentioned they are either college towns or places with large scale tourism activity.

[C24L]

Originally Posted by Taggerung

What are some smaller towns and cities (metro population 500k or less) that have a relatively large amount of small, locally owned businesses and haven't had their heart and soul completely ripped out by Walmart, Target, and Amazon?

Midland and Odessa,Texas have lots of locally owned small businesses although its mostly big box stores and amazon that dominate retail.