Small Town Evaporation (lake, converting, cow, prices)
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Which well known small cities have been impacted the most by the influx of outside investors, shop owners and home buyers? Cities that have been swamped by non-resident shop owners, AirB&B-VRBO owners, etc.
And how has the character of those cities changed?
"Small cities" seems to include a lot of metro suburbs for you? Are "non-resident shop owners" chain stores?
I'm less concerned by places whose economic purpose has shifted, and more concerned by places whose economic purpose has truly evaporated. Nowhere, nobody, nothing stays the same forever.
I remember long ago talking to a planner in Charleston SC about how their downtown was becoming a resort.
Most of the towns around Puget Sound in WA these days have gotten pretty saturated with people's second homes, expensive hotels, cutesy cafes and pastry shops, stores with Instagram handwritten fonts on everything.
Langley, Anacortes, and La Conner come to mind as towns where you can see both the modern cutesy aesthetic and the older blue-collar aesthetic in close proximity.
I don't know anything about most of those towns but I can tell you that Lewisville TX has not been a ”typical rural small town” for at least 50 years. It's right on the interstate highway between Denton a small city and Dallas a very large city, the two of which are about 30 miles apart edge-to-edge. It's been a bedroom community of Denton and the northwest corner of Dallas since the 70s. I suspect a very large number of the so-called ”small rural towns” listed are the same way.
The term "small cities" is tricky. In New Hampshire, for example the distinction between "town" and "city" is primarily derived from whether the municipality still holds town meetings for budgeting, so there are towns in NH which are much bigger than Lebanon in terms of both area and population.
Lebanon changed character decades ago due to the regional influence of Dartmouth College, and more so when Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center and the medical school moved in; hasn't been much room for further change due to "non-resident shop owners, AirB&B-VRBO owners, etc".
Location: IN>Germany>ND>OH>TX>CA>Currently NoVa and a Vacation Lake House in PA
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Small town USA is due for a resurgence when baby boomers start retiring in force and moving elsewhere. Many are looking to escape the congested, dangerous and liberal cities for a better view.
Starlink(SpaceX) uses LEO satellites for high-bandwidth, low-latency internet, viable for Zoom, Webex, Netflix, etc.
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Originally Posted by Dingo Gibby
Exactly this. Unless small towns are close enough to a large city to become a bedroom suburb or have some attraction to draw in tourists or wealthy seasonal residents, most are on the road to disappearing. It's happening all over the US.
Small towns in NH are experiencing a housing boom, with existing homes selling at a premium over asking price and locals up in arms over developers converting old farms into 20-40 home subdivisions. No longer is this just happening with towns within "commutable distance" of "a large city".
With the growth in work-from-home and the advent of Starlink low-latency internet, many workers are realizing they can do their job from anywhere, so why not do it from a state with no income or sales tax?
With the growth in work-from-home and the advent of Starlink low-latency internet, many workers are realizing they can do their job from anywhere, so why not do it from a state with no income or sales tax?
In theory that is true, however it seems many of these people then want to turn their new oasis into "where are my sidewalks, street lights, trash pickup and why oh why do I have to drive 2 full miles for coffee and it's not even Starbucks WAH!!"
In my Northern New England experience, dilettante newcomers give up on the region after experiencing a winter or two
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Originally Posted by WouldLoveTo
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workers are realizing they can do their job from anywhere, so why not do it from a state with no income or sales tax?
In theory that is true, however it seems many of these people then want to turn their new oasis into "where are my sidewalks, street lights, trash pickup...
About a half-dozen of my coworkers have moved to New Hampshire. The ones who came up from MA, NJ, etc to get away from the nanny state have all "stuck", two from California called it quits after a winter or two and moved back to the west coast.
That's a common pattern -- dilettante newcomers give up after their first "real" winter and move out again. This past winter was relatively mild, so we have still to see whether the trend holds true for the pandemic refugees who have been driving housing sales through the roof for over a year now. In the past 18 months, prices in the north (Coos county) have increased by upwards of 50% and sales volume by +80%.
The good news for established residents is that rising home prices do not automatically mean higher property tax bills, but what does bring higher taxes is the extra children in the schools, or when the new residents manage to vote in appropriations in the town budget for those sidewalks, street lights, and trash pickup services.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WouldLoveTo
why oh why do I have to drive 2 full miles for coffee and it's not even Starbucks WAH!!"
We have a coffeeshop (local, independent) in town, but that's still a +2 mile round trip for me. They've even kept their sign up to date with the changing times:
Still no lattes or wifi.
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The term "small cities" is tricky.
Starlink(SpaceX) uses LEO satellites for high-bandwidth, low-latency internet, viable for Zoom, Webex, Netflix, etc.
In my Northern New England experience, dilettante newcomers give up on the region after experiencing a winter or two
