Many small rural towns are struggling for survival as job seekers departed for large cities to find work. What workers found in large cities often was traffic jams, crime, little contact with neighbours, and more expensive cost of living.
Many workers today are able (technology wise as well as the nature of their work) to perform their work perfectly well from a remote location. I know because I rotated weekly between client sites and my office and could do everything I did, from home (just with less distraction).
Maybe the future for small towns is to ensure they have good Internet connectivity, and they can attract remote workers due to lower crime rates, lower cost of living, zero traffic, and more contact with locals. It could well be a solution also for cities which are over crowded.
The Victorian era practice of crowding people into office space top work, should be long past. The technology already enables us to work remotely, and we just now need employers to see the light (way too many do not).
One positive that may come out of the Coronavirus is that it may well force people to work remotely, but my fear is we snap back into the old way of doing things straight afterwards.
See What Happened When Tulsa Paid People to Work Remotely
The first class of hand-picked remote workers moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in exchange for $10,000 and a built-in community. The city might just be luring them to stay.