The Grass is Always Greener: Why People Who Live in the Suburbs Want to Live in the City, and People Who Live in the City (Surprisingly) Want to Live in the Suburbs

Greg Hanscom put up an interesting take on Grist.org on the discrepancy between where people say they want to live (dense cities) and where they actually seem to be ending up living (sprawling suburbs).  He points to polling data that came from the real estate advising firm RCLCO showing that 88% of Millenials and even their Baby Boomer parents express a desire to live in denser and less car-dependent settings, which is in conflict with census data showing population growth in the suburbs and declines in the cities.

His take:

  • Lots of Millenials would LOVE to move to the cities, but to do that they need of them jobs that no one seems to be able to get these days. So they’re camping out at their parents’ place in the suburbs, “watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia reruns and dreaming of big city living.”
  • Although crime is down in the big cities, but not enough to diminish frightening images of the city as violent places.
  • And although young people like to live in the cities, they pack up for the suburbs as soon as they have kids.

Finally, he makes a brilliant point that maybe this is all about something deep in the American psyche that makes us consistently pine for that which we don’t have, almost a “grass is always greener” perspective that affects all of us.  He points out that according to a 2009 Pew poll, 46% of the public “would rather live in a different type of community from the one they’re living in now — a sentiment that is most prevalent among city dwellers.”

It’s a brilliant post, and I think he’s right on all counts.  Without question young people want to live in the cities — why wouldn’t someone who is 25 prefer to live in a place with abundant nightlife opportunities, ethnic diversity, culture, and public transportation that allows you to drink your face off and still get home safely?  And, conversely, it’s also abundantly clear that people tend to gravitate toward the larger living spaces afforded in the suburbs once they start filling up their 600 square foot apartment with a bunch of screaming children.

Moreover, I think there’s something to the “grass is greener” affect.  Most people who live in the city tend to settle down into a torpid state where they take all that great city stuff for granted.  Like me, they stop going out so much, particularly as they get older, and spend more time in their home and surrounding neighborhood.  And then they increasingly realize that, boy, it really sucks to spend 90% of your time in a two-room apartment, so they pine away for the larger, greener pastures of the suburbs.  Then, of course, you have people like me who move to the suburbs for a lot of good reasons, but look around one night at the Cheescake Factory and think that they’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.  Essentially, we all want what we don’t have, particularly if we used to have it.  It must be something deeply wired into our brains to keep us constantly on the move, always looking for something better, that helped us get through the caveman days.  But it really does make it difficult to appreciate what you have.

So I have no problem admitting that I’m one of those people: I moved to the suburbs, but I really do miss living in the city, and I’m certainly happy that I got my 17 years of urban living in before I exiled myself.

I’ll also say this: if you’re reading this, and you live in the city, go do something. Go to the park, or a club, or a great restaurant, or stare at paintings.  That’s why you’re living in the city, why you’re sacrificing all that money and comfort.  So go do it.  Before it’s too late.

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  1. […] whether the American love affair with the suburbs is dying. Basically, it’s a debate about where people SAY they want to live, and where they are actually choosing to live.  That is, people keep saying that they want to live in dense, diverse, urban environments, but […]