Our images of life in urban, suburban, and rural America are dominated by clichés: urban hipsters living in loft apartments, suburbanites mowing their lawns, rural Americans hunting and fishing.
Now, a fascinating new survey explores many of these long-standing tropes and finds that urbanites, suburbanites, and rural residents are much more alike than different in what we want from our communities. The survey, conducted in January of this year by researchers at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy in conjunction with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, covers a random sample of more than 1,000 Americans across all 50 states.
