How does a small town grow rapidly?

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This is more to do with local government than about national or international politics.

How do you think a small town, under 10,000 people, can grow rapidly in the 21st century similar to how towns and cities grew up in the past? Is it even possible to raise public or national consciousness of a town/city? Is it possible for any local town/city to catch it's "big break" or go into the spotlight?

Not sure what you're asking, nor why you're asking it.

The reason towns "grew fast" in the past had little to do with the town's own government and more to do with external forces. Like the frontier opening up, or a new resource being found (so boom towns would appear because of gold, or oil, or whatever, being discovered).

One city grew fast because of an industry emerging thousands of miles away. And then the same city reverted to a near ghost town because of one shady visitor.

The city of Manaus on the Amazon river in Brazil became a big city because thousands of miles away Henry Ford invented the automobile and created a demand for the local resource- the sap from local trees that turns into rubber.

Manaus became a metropolis over night. And then a British guy smuggled rubber tree seeds in a cane out of the city, and took the seeds to the British colony of Malaya where they figured out how to grow the darn trees locally. And Manaus then got destroyed over night by the new competition.

Manaus is still a substantial city with a nice opera house.