Micropolitan

Main Street America—and its small towns—is a central component to understanding the economic forces at work across the United States. Dotting the U.S. map—in the Heartland¹ and beyond—are 531 small towns, better known as micropolitan statistical areas, which comprise of one or more counties with at least one city with more than 10,000 but less than 50,000 in population.

The American research university is the nation’s best defense against economic competition from the rest of the world. Research shouldn’t be confined to a library, lab, or lecture hall. When it comes to America’s research universities, across the Heartland and beyond, data show that when universities and communities collaborate, the positive impacts on the workforce, tax base, startup activity and economy opportunity grow exponentially.

5G, the fifth generation of wireless communications, has the potential to make the opportunity cost of rural living much larger, maybe insurmountably so.

Smaller locales are not necessarily known for their economic dynamism. Nonetheless, cluster attributes exist through thoughtful guidance. The five communities’ economic successes were not the result of random, serendipitous events.