A study out of the University of Minnesota found that in Minnesota while younger adults are leaving rural towns, people in their thirties, forties and fifties are returning.
The chart below shows the key findings from the study.
Rural America rising: why professionals are moving to the countryside, an article on the study, provides a good explanation of why people are moving to small towns:
Surveying Minnesota realtors and the new arrivals themselves ... found that large numbers of these immigrants were professionals, who were moving to smaller towns to improve their quality of life. Thanks to some excellent broadband coverage across the region, people can work from home even if their head office lies far off elsewhere. And, as more people move, the towns bleed into each other, building a network of different occupations and levels of expertise.
Regular readers know one of our favorite trends is the paradox of place.
The paradox is even though the Internet and connective technologies have made working remotely easier than ever, people and companies are increasingly clustering together in fewer, more valuable locations mostly in or near cities.
But recently there have been a growing number of signals that companies and people are starting to move out of the cities and to areas with lower costs and higher quality of life. This includes moving into smaller towns more rural areas.
This study is another signal.
We're not even close to thinking the paradox of place is going away. But it appears that the Internet and connective technologies may finally be leading to a greater geographic distribution of work.
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