I think you are right and wrong, small towns that serviced local farmers, "the factory", or other disappearing "employers" are dying.

Meanwhile, a whole new crop of small towns is sprouting up serving seniors, commuters, and vacationers. My little town in Florida grew from 18,000 to 90,000 over ten years... not so little anymore.

My present town had been booming and only stopped because we ran out of land. Now the town northeast of us is booming because of commuters.

Little southern towns are become retirement communities with all those cute little stores you talk about opening up to service seniors with lots of time and money and nothing to do.

Said another way, small towns generally exist to service a demographic and the demographics of America are changing. Covid and crime has produced a second massive exodus of our cities and suburban areas are thriving because of them. Many of these "suburbs" are an hour away from the cities people used to commute to but now they can work from home.

I have seen a transition of downtown areas from retail to service businesses, but in our community those service businesses are coffee shops, restaurants, real estate agencies, medical offices, legal offices, hair salons, barber shops, antique stores, repair shops and very boutique retail that big box stores do not compete with.

Small towns are not dying, they are simply "relocating" to where the people are.