If you want people to come and spend money in your small towns, you're going to have to give them some reason to do that. If you don't want that, that's certainly your business, but with the consolidation of agriculture and the mechanization of manufacturing that have been going on the last several decades, it's not clear to me what else your local economies can be based on. And indeed, the depopulation of rural areas and small towns that this article is discussing suggests that a lot of local economies are having a very hard time.

If you have a better idea for a solution, by all means, tell us.

What "real needs" do you have in mind?