Not necessarily all of them, mind you. There are some who move to them and embrace the atmosphere and culture they have, who want to change nothing about them and those, I have no quarrel with at all. I'm more referring to the ones who are basically moving to them to escape the mess of the cities they've helped create.

Now, most small towns are more or less perpetually frozen in time. There may be newer cars and trucks moving through the streets, but aside from that, you could easily mistake still being in the mid to late 20th Century. And that's the way many of us who live here like it. We like the old style atmosphere, the fact that nothing really changes, the quiet, peaceful air they have. We like the mom and pop shops and garages owned by the same families for almost eighty to a hundred years, the local coffee shops and small malls and bookstores, and on the coasts, the long lived fishing docks and plants. We don't care for high priced chain stores or coffee shops like Starbucks or any of that fluff. Now, not all like that, but those who don't simply move away to a place they like better, and we're fine with that. You live how you want where you do, and we'll keep to ourselves.

That is, until the type of city folk I mentioned above decide to flee to small towns. They don't integrate. They have no connection to the small town lifestyle, and they have no connection to the place's history, and thus care nothing for preserving it. They bulldoze historic buildings that are not under preservation status yet for the ugly modern aesthetics they created in the cities, they force the mom and pop shops out of business by bringing in the very high end and high price chain stores and coffee shops none of us wanted. They end up raising the prices of houses and apartment rent, forcing many of the families who grew up for generations in them out. They fundamentally change the town forever by changing the laws and regulations through sheer mass in their votes. They effectively destroy how it used to be and create a mini version of the place they just left.

And what could be the worst part of the whole ordeal? They stare with upturned noses at those of us who were here either our whole lives or long stretches of it. They have the air of superiority of being upper class city dwellers, self assured in the knowledge that they are better than us backwards plebians. They scoff and say with smug expressions that they're making the place better, that they know best, and how could anyone possibly want to live the way the town was for decades or longer before they showed up.

Until, that is, they effectively wreck the area and begin complaining about the same things they had before they came here, and go to another place yet untouched by them to start the process all over again. So, yeah. City people absolutely ruin small towns with their mindsets and changes.

And personally? I think they should stay in their cities and deal with the consequences of what they brought down on their own heads. Not everyone wants to live like you do.