I'm hoping small(er) towns will make a comeback what with communications tech & ability to work from home. Sadly, cities are in decline due to increased crime, high taxes & cost of living, bad schools, and general disorder. Healthy children need to connect with the outdoors, including outdoor pets & activities such as fishing!
Unfortunately I dont see them gaining much advantage in the near future, with the giant stores and companies putting pretty much all small mom and pop stores out of business, even down to filling stations, if you dont have an 18 pump filling stations you are gonna be out of business soon. You have Dollar stores and Caseys trying to cater to smaller communities but the frustrating part is the doggone small town consumer, instead of patronizing these smaller entities, most of them will drive 5 miles to buy gas for 2 cents less, or order crap from giant online sellers such as Amazon instead of patronizing their local guy because they can buy window cleaner for 20cents less per bottle shipped to their house, and all their tax monies went to some distant state.
Now we have UPS and Fedex drivers tearing up and down county roads and very little tax money coming into the community from it.
Ok I will get off my pedestal now, rant over.
