Abstract
Rural and small town New Zealand is undergoing significant demographic and economic transitions. Steady out-migration, economic change and population aging since the 1980s/1990s catalysed the 'zombie town' discourse. This parallels the rise of rural multiculturalism as a new multi-ethnic demographic makeup is distinctly visible due to diversification of immigration policies responding to regional labour and skills shortages, amenity migrations, and counterurbanisation. While having the potential to restore regional economic and cultural vibrancy, these changes lead to issues related to integration challenges for migrants as well as tensions in host communities regarding diminishing rural amenities, lifestyles, and exhaustion of the limited rural infrastructure base. Some of these dynamics have gained new momentum due to COVID-19-induced disruptions, e.g. border closure. These are occurring at the same time as broader economic, environmental and planning policy shifts disrupt rural realities and opportunities. This commentary presents initial evidence from a larger study and discusses emerging discourses related to regional New Zealand in five thematic areas - demographic disruptions and new mobilities, emerging small town realities beyond economic migration, impacts of COVID-19, economic development, and the changing governance and planning landscape. In particular we highlight the need to recognise the emerging rural multiculturalism in small town planning and development, which received little attention in the past due to planning's historical 'large city' bias and other local constraints.