I don’t like living in big cities anymore. I like visiting and spending some time there, but I love living in a 100k+ population city. And while I moved here before the pandemic, I was so happy I made the move when it started.
And I’m not the only one. There’s now a name for the cities/towns that allow people to work remotely while balancing a good life close to nature: Zoom towns.
Rumore bets there’s a good chance many Zoom towners will remain in their new homes, too, particularly as towns evolve alongside their latest residents.
“Once they reach this tipping point where they’re a pretty cool town with a nice coffee shop and cool bars and good restaurants – when they get over the hump and become a place – people want to stay,” she says. “So, what’s interesting about this flood of amenity migration is that it probably tipped a lot of these communities over that hump.”
Sherlin, the remote worker who traded Los Angeles for Northwest Arkansas, says she feels like she landed in the right place at the right time. “So far, I absolutely love it,” she says. “I don’t see myself leaving, but I’m going to complete the year and figure it out from there.”
No one knows whether companies will keep remote-work policies forever, so it’s hard to predict the future of these nature-adjacent Zoom towns or the workers who’ve flocked to them. At the moment, however, for outdoors-loving workers who are able to pick up and leave, many Zoom towns have rolled out their welcome mats. Step on in.
From here: The ‘Zoom towns’ luring remote workers to rural enclaves – BBC Worklife.
