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How to recruit new residents, remote workers, or remote entrepreneurs

By Becky McCray

The most common thing rural people ask us about remote workers is how to attract them. To find out what will make your town attractive, let’s look at what attracts people to your town right now.  Every town has some people moving in every year, and we don’t notice them. We are far more aware […]

June 2, 2022 Filed Under: community, economic development, rural Tagged With: in migration, remote work, resident attraction, rural, rural sourcing, zoom towns

Make extra money from extra workspace: co-working and 3rd workplaces in small towns

By Becky McCray

  With more people working remotely, more people are working from places that are neither their offices or their homes. Cue the rise of the Third Workplace. You may remember “third places” as places you hangout that aren’t home and aren’t work. Coffee shops, bars and places like that. “Third workplaces” are places you work […]

March 28, 2022 Filed Under: Best of, economic development, entrepreneurship, ideas, rural, trends Tagged With: coworking, remote work, rural sourcing, third places, workshifting, zoom towns

Way more people prefer rural than urban, new Pew Research study finds

By Becky McCray

Pew Research chart showing preference for cities has declined, a growing share now favors suburbs, and many more prefer rural than urban

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 […]

February 1, 2022 Filed Under: community, rural, trends Tagged With: challenges, community, future, Pew Research, remote work, rural, rural sourcing, studies, trends, zoom towns

Top 5 Rural and small town trends 2022

By Becky McCray

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 […]

January 3, 2022 Filed Under: community, economic development, entrepreneurship, POV, rural, trends Tagged With: Becky McCray, Climate, community development, future, nature, neighboring, news, remote work, rural, rural migration, rural sourcing, rural trends, small towns, trends, zoom towns

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