As far as these preferences go, I think of myself as an outlier in the US, but with 11 kids and pride in fixing your own sewer and/or not wanting a plumber in y

As far as these preferences go, I think of myself as an outlier in the US, but with 11 kids and pride in fixing your own sewer and/or not wanting a plumber in your house for privacy reasons, you appear to be much more of an outlier in the opposite direction. Sure, in that case, you have to live in suburbs (or a rural setting). I know some people who want to live walking distance to long mountain running trails, that places even more severe restrictions on them. For an average person though, preference for suburbs is usually just based on outdated preconceived notions and habit (scared on a city bus? buses in HCOL areas, esp. those going to major white collar employment areas e.g. Seattle to Redmond, have like 30% of the people on their laptops half the time; uncomfortable in crowds, in the US? most US cities have no crowds to speak of even in downtown core, and in any case most people are quite fine in a crowd at a football game or a concert). Also, even with an extreme bias towards suburbs in the US ("the children!"), many people do prefer cities if you judge by the price per sqft.