Penturbia

Rural tech startups see success across the US | TechCrunch

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While tech startups have become synonymous with urban areas that offer improved access to talent, resources and infrastructure, the reality is that rural areas are also home to startups. This may come as a surprise to those who have moved away from rural areas specifically to find a job in the tech industry, which accounts for more than 6.7 million jobs in the United States alone.

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And the advantages to having your tech startup based in a rural area? Plenty. Young was full of praise, citing “low cost of living, no traffic, elbow room, and easy access to the outdoors.” In a similar vein, Langer talked about how Red Wing is a great place for those with a love of the outdoors, its close proximity to both Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as only being 45 minutes away from the nearest airport. “Red Wing is the perfect mix of small town and big city,” Langer said. “It’s a wonderful place to raise children. It’s got everything.” An important factor Levy brought up was access to quality education. The Gorge has access to quality schools and “employees for a high-tech company want the best schools for their kids.”

Source: Rural tech startups see success across the US | TechCrunch

In my 2015 eBook Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century, I discuss these and other advantages less populated regions offer in terms of housing affordability, enhanced quality of life and the end of stressful, time sucking commutes across congested metro areas. The growth of the knowledge and information-based economy makes location far less relevant — unlike during the Industrial Age when work was centralized in downtown metro areas and suburban office parks.

Key to this reverse Industrial Age migration to what author Jack Lessinger termed Penturbia in his 1991 book of the same name is the modernization and expansion of fiber to the premise telecommunications infrastructure to ensure all areas have access to advanced services. It is as critical to the 21st century as roads and highways were to the 20th.

High urban rents and falling rural land prices drive flight of startups to countryside – Workplace Insight

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We’ve reported before on the flight of tech firms and other startups from the UK’s cities to the countryside. Now it appears that 2016 will see an acceleration in the exodus, as a consequence of the perfect storm of expensive rents in the cities, falling rural land prices and a growing number of people using technology and improving digital infrastructure to live somewhere they feel they have a more balanced life. That is the striking conclusion of a new survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and Royal Agricultural University (RAU) indicates. Over the second half of 2015, non-farmers, such as those starting-up cottage industries, accounted for around 25 per cent of rural land sales. This figure was up from just 18 per cent in the first half of 2015, according to the RICS/RAU Rural Land Market Survey H2 2015 and the trend was strongest in South East England where non-farmers accounted for 32 per cent of all sales.

Source: High urban rents and falling rural land prices drive flight of startups to countryside – Workplace Insight

In my eBook Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty First Century, I discuss this migration trend first predicted by Jack Lessinger in his 1991 book Penturbia: Where Real Estate Will Boom After the Crash of Suburbia.

Lessinger’s book identified real estate microeconomics as the key driver: lower and more affordable housing costs in smaller locales where housing prices declined during the post World War II suburban boom. Less than a decade after Penturbia was published, the Internet came into widespread use, enabling the decentralization of knowledge work out of large metro areas to less populous ones, adding a powerful accelerant to the shift.