well, germany is quite spread out and has lots of tech in smaller towns. It's not always perfect and we are also struggeling with some things, but I think a few approaches can be emulated. First, I think it's important that the small town is not on it's own, but in a close neighborhood of other smaller towns with which it's cooperating a lot. For a serious tech economy, even small towns need a working ecosystem (and I think can't be too small). They have to specialize, cooperate and develop the needed ecosystem, so that they can reach "critical mass" in some area. Ideally, this includes a small university nearby, so that there's a cooperation between the task of education and employement and the specialized, needed workforce can be trained. Also, research-institutes, which help small businesses which can't fund a research division on their own, are important. In germany, they are often coupled with thematic industrial clusters, a smaller patch of land where the city tries to get all the industry together. The research-institutes in germany are the Frauenhofer-institutes, public-private partnerships of applied reasearch with a focus and goal of supporting the local economy.
For example, the small town of Hof in bavaria with a population of 45.000. It has a university of applied science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof_University_of_Applied_Scie...), which is focused on educating the workforce suitable to the local economy (often in close cooperation). There's some research going on in the university, but it's not a research intensive one. Since the textile-industry in Hof is quite strong, there's a Frauenhofer cooperating with the university of applied science nearby (https://www.htl.fraunhofer.de/en/manufacturing-processes/tex...).
TLDR: I think tech in smaller towns is possible, but it needs a specialized economy, not too-small towns and a close cooperation between the public and private. Tech won't come by itself, it needs to be lured.
Germany has a good railway system that connects many (most? all?) small villages with nearby towns with nearby cities. More importantly, its rural population density is an order of magnitude greater than the US, at 237/km^2 vs 35/km^2 (source: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/rural-population-percen..., https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/rural-population-...). The biggest misconception that I’ve found my friends from other developed countries have about the US is that we are comparable to other developed countries; we aren’t; we’re more comparable to a continent, and more of a second-world country than a first-world one.
Moreover, the US system of government was designed to tilt the scales a bit in favor of rural areas than cities (that was maybe a fair trade-off a couple centuries ago). Combine that structural power dynamic with decades of rural depopulation as smart kids from small towns pursue opportunity in cities (I’m one) and it goes a long way towards explaining why we seem so crazy with our elected officials.
IMHO average population density is an almost meaningless number, because population density is not even close to a distribution where the mean is informative. I'm not sure whether it's the case in the US, but it's perfectly possible to have a tiny average population density and yet areas where small and medium towns are not too far apart from each other. You don't have to have rail service connection a tiny town in Arkansas to New York, it's sufficient if there is a train to the next city with its own cinema.
National population density in the US is misleading. Population density drops off sharply between the Rockies and somewhere around Iowa. East Coast states that we think of as mostly rural, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, have population densities that are squarely within the European range: 110 people/sq km in Pennyslvania vs. 106 in Hungary; 81 in Virginia vs. 82 in Romania. On the other hand, Utah (14) is less dense than Saudi Arabia (16) - both places are mostly desert.
Arkansas has a population density of 22 people/sq km, close to Sweden - but Arkansas is probably much less urbanized.
I agree that the population density is a big factor, i wanted to express that with "not-too-small-towns". I don't see how tech-jobs can move into the completely rural areas. But there are still areas left above the critical population mass.
If you speak French or German, there is this recent documentary about China linking up its villages to e-commerce [1].
The presented village specialized in silver manufacturing. The example supports your thesis that some form of specialization is needed to be competitive enough in a market.
That said, I think research facilities are only needed if the economy is focused on state of the art technology. Otherwise, the joined experience of the businesses seem to be enough to keep them competitive.
What's interesting to me is that the Chinese villagers seem to have jumped on the opportunity on their own, without any government incentives. I would like to know what's holding back other villages in China or around the world to look for their own opportunities?
From my experience visiting, Germany does a much better job of getting services into smaller communities. From Mainz, where my family lives, we took streetcar and then bus out into surrounding villages and towns which would be totally un-serviced by transit if they were in North America -- even in areas where the population density is equivalent or higher (such as where I live in southern Ontario).
Tech infrastructure is only one part of it. North America's rural economy is broken due to land use and industry problems. Once you get out of exurbia or areas that are appealing as retirement or vacation homes, the land is mostly just swathes of cash crop mega farms and towns mostly disappearing due to lack of jobs.
Europe's mostly small towns predate the industrial revolution and the green revolution. They have cultural and economic roots that seem to have persisted better through the 20th century's transformations.
Of the top of my head I can't remember a single big online thing targeting consumers that Germany does. The US has google, facebook, twitter etc, so rather than say Germany has figured out how to do tech in a small town, I would rather think it is accurate for Germany not to have figured out the tech at all.
I know they make cars with electronics in them, but honestly I haven't seen a car with electronics that fundamentally changed how most people approached anything (Cruise Control is nice; self-driving would be a fundamental game changer), Apple and Google have done so in my life time.
well, german tech is not really into the business of targeting consumers. You can critizise it, but you can't deny that germany has a large high-tech industry. I was making the observation that the tech industry in germany is quite spread out and that the solutions here could be applicable to rural america.
For example, the small town of Hof in bavaria with a population of 45.000. It has a university of applied science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof_University_of_Applied_Scie...), which is focused on educating the workforce suitable to the local economy (often in close cooperation). There's some research going on in the university, but it's not a research intensive one. Since the textile-industry in Hof is quite strong, there's a Frauenhofer cooperating with the university of applied science nearby (https://www.htl.fraunhofer.de/en/manufacturing-processes/tex...).
TLDR: I think tech in smaller towns is possible, but it needs a specialized economy, not too-small towns and a close cooperation between the public and private. Tech won't come by itself, it needs to be lured.