These upper floor murals were painted by the community members of Webster City, Iowa. It’s part of the bonus trend from this article. Photo by Michael Hansen, used by permission.

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 Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, Farm Bureau’s Rural Community Building, Small Business Trends and the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Foundation.

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. These are larger scale trends that will be in play for years, not super micro trends that are already obvious or so small they’re subject to change next week.

Top 5 Rural and Small Town Trends for 2022 and beyond

1. New residents arriving.

After saying for years that remote work would bring more people to choose a rural residence, here we are: Zoom Towns!

The real trend isn’t an explosive exodus from major tech and population centers, but the more subtle diffusion of opportunities to a broader swath of places.

We’re seeing the convergence of multiple factors:

• a pandemic that forced a major adoption of remote work
• pent up demand for rural living
• improving rural broadband
• the great resignation and re-evaluation of life choices
• climate and disasters shifting relocation decisions
• increased rural tourism through the boom in road trips

Bonus trend: People are eager to belong.

With more people relocating, expect an increase in deliberate community building, reaching across polarizing divides.

Watch for projects in:

• Neighboring
• Beautification
• Belonging

2. Natural environment regenerating.

The shift from simple awareness or protection of the environment to deliberately trying to make things around you better.

Innovative farmers and ranchers are being better stewards, improving the land and environment with each successive season.

Indigenous People and Native Tribes are gaining control of more of their traditional lands, fostering regeneration and advocating environmental policy improvements.

Natural resources are changing, and new sustainable natural resources booms are coming that make sense in rural places including:

• timber and lignin
• mushroom and other natural fiber materials
• dirt, clay and earthen buildings
• renewable and greener energy

3. Leadership and power shifting.

Much like the surge in new residents, the shift in leadership started a long time ago. In 2015, we developed our Idea Friendly Method to help you understand and adapt to the shift from the formal to informal, from centralized to community, from control to chaos.

Awareness of the change is finally percolating up, even to the World Economic Forum. And it’s also percolating down, to the level of local organizations and officials in small towns.

Watch for:

• Less emphasis on joining boards or committees to talk about change
• More emphasis on joining activities you enjoy to take action

4. Rural healthcare reimagined.

Pressured by financial crises, closures and staff shortages before the pandemic, rural health care is due for reimagining. Between improving telemedicine and rapid advances in smart everything, will we still need general hospitals in small towns in 10 years? Do we really need them now? We’re already seeing rural communities come up with innovative answers that improve health care without focusing so much on the building.

Keep an eye on:

• Community involvement in health care facilities and futures
• Smart use of technology to improve people’s health

5. Economic barriers falling.

Equitable economic development is the buzzword of the moment in grants, programs and planning. For small towns, it’s really about making entrepreneurship easier for more people and creating a fairer economy.

Small towns are the testing grounds for the future, and rural people innovate. Want to be resilient in the next big crisis? Tap our innovative spirit.

Focus now on developing:

• Local supply chain
• Small makers
• Artisans
• Tiny manufacturers

Free video report:

Watch Deb Brown and me present these trends more in depth at SaveYour.Town: 2022 Rural Trends.

Watch the free video

This article cited by:

• Forbes – Research and Insights on Why Millennials and Gen Z Will Drive Small Town Entrepreneurship by Bernhard Schroeder
• Mendimi – Pse Millennials dhe Gen Z do të nxisin sipërmarrjen e qyteteve të vogla? Albania
• Bank of I.D.E.A.S. by Peter Kenyon, Community and Economic Development Matters Newsletter, April 13, 2022, Australia
• Wetzel-Tyler Chamber of Commerce newsletter

Murals add life and color to a downtown and are highly visible even to people driving through. The activity that goes into creating them generates more attention for downtown. Traditional wall painted murals usually cost a lot of money and take a long time to get approvals. The good news is that you can create cheap instant murals. You have or can scrounge everything you need to start now.

Make sheet murals.

Get cheap torn or stained sheets from the thrift shops, paint right on them, or sew them up into something decorative.

Hang them up downtown, maybe inside the windows of a building, outside hung over a railing or fence. Use magnets to stick them to any building with metal siding.

Find free wood to paint.

Paint on old boards you scrounge up from neighbors.

Paint on pallets that businesses can donate for free.

Pallets can usually be scrounged up at no cost, then painted for quick inexpensive art. Photo by Harmon County Forward, used by permission.

Display the painted wood inside the windows of empty buildings. Mount them on fences or railings downtown. Plant them in empty lots or vacant spaces.

Collect campaign signs.

After an election, collect the old campaign signs. Call the former candidates, and ask if they have extras they’d give you. Turn the paper signs inside out and paint on them. Take the colorful plastic coroplast ones and cut them up and re-assemble into fun mosaic designs.

Hang them from railings and fences downtown.

Use empty windows as a free canvas.

Use shoe polish on glass doors or windows, inside or outside. Start with the empty buildings.

Try a vine design on empty windows or glass doors. Photo by Becky McCray.

Make a chalk mural.

Any space you might paint a mural, you can make a chalk mural. It’s just temporary. Photo by Elaina Turpin, used by permission.

Check the thrift stores for cheap used sidewalk chalk. Ask around to see who has some they can donate.

Treat any smooth concrete surface as a possible chalk mural site. Yes, it will wash away in the next rains, but placemaking doesn’t have to be permanent. It’s the activity and visible change that matter. You can always replace it with a new chalk design next time.

Temporary art can be beautiful placemaking.

Instant murals make your downtown a more vibrant place right away without spending a fortune. After awhile, take down your fabric or wood murals, cut them into frame-able chunks and sell them off to raise money for the next project. 

Thinking that the solution has to be big and permanent is what keeps you from doing cool little things that only last a while.

The goal isn’t the mural itself or the artwork. The goal is to show life and activity right away so you can bring shoppers back downtown. 

Cheap Downtown Placemaking Ideas

Deb Brown and I found 39 practical placemaking ideas like this that you do for $100 or less right away. We put them in a video that you can buy and watch immediately. The video clip about sheet murals (above) is a sample from it. The full 30 minute video costs only $5, and you can find it here: Cheap Downtown Placemaking Ideas.

More cheap ideas

This is a short sample from the SaveYour.Town video “Refilling Your Business Pipeline” featuring Deb Brown and me.

Small towns and rural communities will need new business startups to revitalize their local economies, but not many people have the resources today to do a startup the way it’s traditionally been done.

Part of what holds your potential new entrepreneurs back is thinking that going into business has to be a big and difficult and long project.

Imagine all the work that “everyone knows” is part of starting a new business:

If you decided to open a retail store, you have decide on your specialty and what kind of merchandise to carry, deciding or guessing whether your town will support it, finding a location and remodeling it or even bringing it up to code, decorating, finding suppliers and getting started with them, getting your local banking established, securing financing, hiring staff, advertising and marketing, and all that before you even know whether your initial concept is actually sound.

In small towns, those problems can be magnified where you may face a shortage of usable buildings, long distances to suppliers who don’t pay attention to small accounts like yours, few local banks, no chance of local financing, few choices for potential workers, and a smaller potential market. It seems like it takes a lot of time, money and work just to get into business.

You have to get all your ducks in a row.

What if I told you there was a much easier way to get into business?

Just get one duck and go from there. 

Imagine building some steps in between. If you could buy just a few products and test them by running a temporary business inside another business for a month or two, you’d learn a lot about what sells in your local market right now. If that works, maybe you could rent a small booth in a shared retail building. If something doesn’t work, you can fix it and try again.

From there, jumping up to starting a traditional store doesn’t seem as hard. You’ve learned what people want to buy. You’ve established relationships with suppliers. You’ve gained a loyal following. All those smaller steps lift you up closer to jumping over that hurdle of starting a traditional business. And if you miss a jump at a smaller step, it’s easier to recover and try something new.

Why this works

That’s the purpose of the innovative rural business models. They put people in a much better position to succeed, or to fail in a manageable way. It cuts time and money off the process of getting into business. 

For economic developers, these give you an easy way to add entrepreneurship promotion to existing projects and activities. It’s not about starting new things from scratch. It’s about finding and building on the small steps that already exist in your area.

Get the full video

The entire 30 minute is available for purchase at SaveYour.Town: Refilling Your Business Pipeline.

Learn more

Many towns have hidden parking areas that could be connected to their downtown with hallways like this one. Kendrick, Idaho, photo by Becky McCray.

There’s not enough parking downtown!

Doesn’t every city have that problem? You’re about to learn a new way to get more parking for your Main Street without having to pave, stripe or get a permit. It doesn’t work in every town, but it very well might work in yours.

Finding hidden parking

There is only so much parking on the main street in front of businesses. If you look behind businesses, along alleys and on the neighboring blocks, you’ll find hidden lots and spaces. Sometimes business owners and staff use them, sometimes they’re not used very much at all.

If you don’t know of any, try walking up the alleys. You might be surprised by the lots and spaces you discover.

The problem is they’re not easily accessible.

There’s no easy footpath from those hidden spaces to the main street. And some alleys and back lots (well, most) look a bit dodgy or even unsafe. Even if businesses have back doors, they may not welcome people just cutting through to get to a different business. And most people probably feel reluctant to just charge through a business’s backdoor anyway.

Cafe Alley in Ardmore, Oklahoma, can only be entered from the large parking lot in the alley. Photo by Becky McCray.

Creating hallways people will use

Here’s how to create safe and interesting ways for people to walk from the hidden parking to the front of the businesses.

1. Find a physical space where people can walk
2. Make it obvious they’re supposed to walk there
3. Make it attractive and fun to walk there

You can use plantings, grasses, gravel, stones or sidewalks to make the surface more appealing and practical. Think of how you can add some art while you’re there, whether it’s paint, chalk or maybe fabric arts.

Define a path with painted rocks

Sheila Scarborough spotted this hallway in Lockhart, Texas. The plants and painted rocks make the path of travel obvious and help move people from the alley to the front street.

Even a narrow walkway can work

This narrow space in Beaver, Oklahoma, isn’t ideal, but it is clean and easy to walk.

Photo by Becky McCray.

Wide open potential

This wide lot in Ardmore, Oklahoma, offers a direct path from a downhill parking lot up to the main shopping area. The lot is wide enough for multiple uses. The planting areas could be restored. A few chairs around the little built-in table could serve as a resting point for people with mobility challenges. This pathway is so large, it could even host vendors at tables or booths along one side. That would give people added incentive to use the lower parking.

Photo by Becky McCray.

Turn a pocket park into a hallway

Beaver, Oklahoma, also has this pocket park downtown. The brick path effectively connects the alley parking to the front of the block. The benches, plantings and sculpture make it an appealing place to linger.

Photo by Becky McCray.

New video: Empty Lot Economic Development

We’ve partnered with SaveYour.Town to bring you a video with more practical ways to use empty lots to spur economic development and support commerce in your downtown. Learn more about it at: SaveYour.Town Empty Lot Economic Development.

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.

How one town got the city council to change the rules and enabled a great new event to bloom. Photo via Deb Brown.

By Deb Brown

When I was Chamber of Commerce Director in Webster City, Iowa, one of our big events was Junquefest, a three day event where vendors come to town and sell all kinds of junque.

We wanted to close the streets and let the vendors park their trailers by their booths. That was illegal, but we went before the city council and asked could we do that just for this event. The prior two years we held this event in the park and with no trailers allowed. We did have some vendors build a set up on site so it looked like a little store. Now we had an example of how they did it before and how having trailers onsite would make sense. The council said yes. 

Our pilot was still officially against the rules, but by allowing this small step, the council got good information about how it could work if they did change the rules. 

Get people on your side in advance

In another example, our Farmer’s Market is now downtown on a side street just off the main drag. They wanted to close the streets Saturdays from 7:30 to 11 a.m. Again, that’s against the rules. The Farmer’s Market people got their ducks in a row first, then went to the city to suspend the rules. 

There are two businesses on the street they wanted to close. The farmer’s market people talked to the coffee shop people, and they thought it was a good idea. It was, too. More people buy coffee. The other place on the street is a hair salon that has clients to serve on Saturday mornings. The salon owner worked with another business that has a parking lot nearby to allow her clients to park there are Saturday morning. 

Since both businesses involved had already agreed, it was easier for the council to say yes to a rule change.

How to do this in your town

Come up with a small pilot project as a test, before you ask for a big rule change. Then you have some evidence to take back to the council.

When you do your real-world test, be sure the council is invited. There’s nothing like the practical experience of being there to help them make a positive decision!

Go in advance and talk to anyone who will be affected by your plans. Don’t let them be surprised by a news story or a post on Facebook.

New video: Against the Rules

We’ve partnered with SaveYour.Town to bring you a video with 8+ practical ways to get your idea done no matter what the “rule enthusiasts” say. Learn more about it at: SaveYour.Town Against the Rules

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.

They are profiling local businesses in the news paper, organizing cash mobs, and more.

They even posted a big sign pointing highway travelers to the downtown business district.

How are you cultivating your local economy? If it includes a Shop Local campaign, check out our guide for small towns.

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A local BALLE network is different from the local chamber of commerce. The chamber must support all local business development. A local business network can focus on local ownership and sustainable industries. Many reach out to local food producers and farmers. In most places, the local network works with the local chamber. A few chambers actually are their local BALLE network.

This is a way to refine local economic development, away from bulldozers and smokestacks, toward more local and sustainable businesses. If you’re interested in the economic development part of this, pick up a copy of Growing a Local Living Economy by Michael Shuman.

What it does
Local networks offer promotion of local businesses (especially when two or more businesses work together), events, education of the community on why local ownership matters, and lots more. Many offer entrepreneur training and support especially for socially responsible business.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, works with the city to give local bidders an advantage, supports sourcing locally, and does economic gardening bringing together lots of local groups to support local business. They also hold lots of events, including networking, food events and a sustainable business half-day conference.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, did a local community convening to find out what issues are pressing for local business. They also conducted workshops to help local businesses take advantage of all the movie filming that happens in New Mexico. Santa Fe also headed a farm to restaurant food project to better distribute local food to local restaurants. Training farmers to be better businesspeople, educating consumers and restaurants on how to get and use local produce also falls into their mission. They also do a lot of advocacy on legislation.

Summary
A local business alliance allows a small town or a region to tackle issues no one individual could handle alone. It focuses attention on the local economy. Each network selects the most important local issues to address.

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Small town fights can get downright nasty. Don’t worry about this guy; he’s a re-enactor with the Dog Creek Gunfighters. Photo by Becky McCray.

Yes, I do get asked “Is my small town the only one that is this messed up?” The answer is no, you are not alone. We all wonder about it. We all think we must have the most messed up small town anywhere.

We deal with some part of the continuum of bad behavior:

• pettiness
• backstabbing
• gossip
• roadblocks
• sabotage
• hidden agendas
• public agendas
• ax grinding
• illegal actions
• yelling and screaming
• and yes, even the occasional death threat.

My own grandmother endured death threats while teaching reading in a small town. Reading!

No, you are not alone. The truth is, no matter how bad your small town is messed up, there are others just as bad or worse. Do I really need to tell you about the towns where the new resident started an anonymous blog publishing horrific attacks on town leaders? Or the one where the mayor locked the town board members out of the town hall? Or the one where the law had to be called to attend council meetings? Or … you get the idea. You know more examples, too. But that isn’t the part that matters. What matters is the solution.

There’s only one way out. 

You have to go around them. You may even have to back up and try a completely different route, but you have to go around them.

If you’re going through hell, keep going. 

In Texas, I heard about two towns in the same county who are still harboring animosity, bordering on physical hostility, from things that happened more than 100 years ago. The local guys told me over and over how it just wasn’t possible to do anything with that other town.

But… it seems there is a successful brew pub in one town, and a just-getting-started brew pub in the other town. And the two pub owners have been talking, sharing ideas with each other, and generally treating each other like human beings. Which shouldn’t be possible given the town-wide animosity.

Those two brew pub owners are the example. Follow their lead.

Find other like minded people, and work together. Leave the hostile people, or the antagonistic people, or the CAVE people, to do their own thing. And you do your own thing, even if it’s only a little thing at first. It will grow from there.

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All it takes are a few people willing to spend a few dollars to support local businesses. Here’s a group from Luling, Texas, $20 bills in hand.

A “cash mob” is a group of regular people who decide to all support the same local business on the same day. Today is International Cash Mob Day. If you don’t have a cash mob in your town, now is the time to organize one.

What are the rules?

There are no rules, or each community makes their own rules.

You can pick one business that has been around for decades and could use the renewed support, a group of new businesses that need help getting established, any business, whatever works for your town. I think it makes sense to pick one business at a time: concentrate your results in one place.

Then get the word out. Go online, get in the newspaper, do whatever will work to reach people in your town. The organizers of one of the first cash mobs measured success by having one person they didn’t know personally show up and participate. That meant they had reached beyond just their circle of friends.

You can ask people to bring $20 to spend, or $10, or whatever amount is comfortable for most of your community. (If you’re a $100 community, more power to you!)

You can make it all day long, or all at the same time, or once again, whatever works for your town. Play around! Experiment! Have fun!

Luling’s Huber Package Store got really crowded in the first cash mob.

If Luling can do it, you can do it

The Luling, Texas, Area Chamber of Commerce started a cash mob just by picking one business and asking folks to turn out at the same time, each with $20 to spend. When I spoke in Luling earlier this month, Chamber of Commerce President Ada Potts told me about the first one.

“It was at Huber Package Store – Texas’ oldest package [liquor] store,” Ada said.  “We had about 25 folks show up, who spent $800+ in about 45 minutes.  It was a hoot!  The store is only a couple hundred square feet, and it was a lot of fun fitting all the “mobbers” inside.”

“Our 2nd Cash Mob last Thursday was a great success!  We met at the chamber office, then headed to Luling Icehouse Pottery.  We had about 20 folks show up.  The owners put out snacks & sangria.  They had over $900 in sales & a good time was had by all!”

The second business mobbed was the Luling Icehouse Pottery.

Now, go! 
I hope you’re inspired by what a small town can do. If you have a cash mob, tell us about it in the comments: how do you make it work?

If you don’t have one, jump up right now and make one. Call some friends. Post it on Facebook. Text someone. And go spend $20 to keep a favorite local merchant alive and thriving.

Photos courtesy of the Luling Area Chamber of Commerce.

Disclosure: I lived in Luling as a kid, and therefore, I am a huge Luling fan. That’s not really a disclosure. I just wanted to mention it. :)

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Katie McCaskey’s Micropolitan Manifesto, with photos by Pat Jarrett.

If you love small towns, you want to read Katie McCaskey’s Micropolitan Manifesto.

I have an interview with Katie coming up soon, but I couldn’t wait any longer to share the manifesto with you.

Get it. Read it. Tell Katie what you think.

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