Following up on yesterday’s post, here is some survey data from recent decades which shows the preference Americans have for living in small towns:

• From a 1985 Gallup survey: “In the latest poll, the category preferred by the largest percentage of those surveyed, 23 percent, was a small town with a population of less than 10,000. This group, combined with the 17 percent who said they preferred to live on a farm and the 8 percent who wanted to live in a rural area but not on a farm, accounted for the 48 percent who preferred less populated settings.”
• From footnote #2 in the first chapter of Wuthnow’s Small-Town America: “[A] 1985 Roper Poll found that 61 percent of those surveyed thought a small town was best for “the kind of friends you’d have,” compared with only 12 percent who thought a big city would be best (26 percent volunteered “no difference”). Small towns received equally large or larger preferences as places for leading a healthy life, privacy, and raising children.”
• From Pew in 2009: “Americans are all over the map in their views about their ideal community type: 30% say they would most like to live in a small town, 25% in a suburb, 23% in a city and 21% in a rural area.”

A significant issue may be what exactly counts as a small town. A good number of Americans think a small town can include a suburb – this is different than traditional definitions of rural small town. From the same Wuthnow footnote:

Poll results are difficult to interpret because, as I mentioned in the preface, many Americans who live in large metropolitan areas imagine themselves to be living in small towns. In a 2006 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, for instance, 26 percent of those who responded said they lived in a small town, 16 percent said they lived in a rural area, and 57 percent said they lived in a city or suburb (51 percent said they would prefer a small town or rural area if they could live anywhere)… If those responses were taken at face value, 78 million Americans lived in small towns, whereas the US Census showed that only 52 million lived in unincorporated places of under 25,000 (including incorporated places of that size that were in metropolitan areas), and indicated that 222 million Americans lived in urban areas, whereas the poll responses suggested only 174 million…

However you want to put it, a good number of Americans may still prefer small-town values but they now express that by living in suburbs.