Business Technology Fuels Shift to Greener Acres

When Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor said goodbye to city life for the land spreading out so far and wide, they didn’t know they were part of a demographic shift. But the plot of the 1960s sitcom “Green Acres” was a lot closer to the truth than its creators imagined.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the movement of people from cities to the countryside is blurring the lines between urban and rural. While that poses some challenges to the agency’s population and demographic research, it is also part of the changing reality of business development and economic growth.

The Census Bureau defines urban areas as places with dense development across residential, commercial and non-residential land uses. Rural is defined as territory not in an urban area. It may be time to rethink those definitions.

“For decades, American families have been moving farther away from city centers in search of lifestyle changes, more space and other amenities,” the Census report said. “Suburbs have increasingly become employment centers, enabling workers to move farther out, even into rural areas, and still have a reasonable commute.”

The information technology revolution and the rapid expansion of new systems and software has only accelerated this movement from urban to rural and is changing the demographic make-up of the country. And it is fueling rural economies.

The necessity of remote work spawned by the Covid-19 pandemic is now a fact of business life and has given more rural areas a new competitive edge in attracting new business development. And that has profound implications for regions not previously part of the economic development game.

While major urban areas still offer many advantages for business growth – denser populations, a concentration of banking and financial services entities and more advanced transportation networks – rural areas are catching up in several of those areas. Companies looking to expand or relocate their facilities are no longer tied to urban centers to find a skilled workforce or be close to suppliers and logistical centers. As more families move to the countryside is search of a slower pace of daily life, the competition for economic growth has changed.

The move from urban to rural has also been helped by the shift of the U.S. economy from a manufacturing base to a service-based model, and more and more companies are realizing they can cut the cord that tied them to big cities. The growth of the suburbs after World War II created more business opportunities to serve the influx of residents, further fueling the transition away from cities and spreading the population over a wide area.

The gulf between rural and urban has been a thread in the fabric of American society since the nation’s founding and has shaped the history of the United States. But as the differences between city life and country life become more blurred, those differences are becoming less important, especially for business growth.

It is now possible to locate an enterprise anywhere with the promise of technology. And while that may not completely level the economic playing field, there are fewer and fewer reasons not to take the leap to a more pastoral landscape.

New York City may be the financial capital of the world right now, but Hooterville is catching up.