Research institute · Pew Research Center
Pew 2026: 55% of Americans Prefer Spread-Out Communities
55% of US adults say they would prefer a community with larger, more spread-out houses over a walkable neighbourhood with smaller houses close to amenities. The headline is stable but the rural-urban and partisan splits underneath it are what matter for marketers planning regional strategy.
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Key findings at a glance
- 55% of US adults say they would prefer a community where houses are larger and farther apart, even if schools, shops and restaurants are several miles away.
- 44% would prefer the opposite, smaller houses closer together, with schools, shops and restaurants within walking distance.
- 60% of Americans preferred a spread-out community in July 2021, at the pandemic peak. The current 55% reading suggests the pandemic-era density aversion has eased but not fully reversed.
- 69% of Asian adults prefer a walkable community with smaller houses, the largest pro-walkability group in the survey, against a 55% national majority going the other way.
- 59% of White adults prefer a more spread-out community with larger houses, the inverse of the Asian-adult preference and a 10-point gap that drives a lot of the headline.
- 71% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents prefer spread-out communities. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaners, 60% prefer walkable communities, a 31-point partisan gap on the same question.
- 70% of Americans who currently live somewhere rural prefer to live in a spread-out community. 61% of urban residents prefer the walkable option, preferences track the place people already live.
- 84% of rural Republicans prefer spread-out communities, versus 51% of rural Democrats. Even among people living in the same density bracket, partisanship reshapes preference by 33 points.
- 47% of Americans with a postgraduate degree prefer spread-out communities, the lowest figure across the education breakdown. 58% of those with some college or less prefer the spread-out option.
- 18-29 year-olds are the only age group with a majority preferring a walkable community. Every age bracket from 30 upwards leans spread-out, including 52% of those 65 and older.
What the report covers
Pew's short read is an update of a question the Center has tracked since at least 2014: would respondents rather live in a community where houses are larger and farther apart, even if amenities are several miles away, or one where houses are smaller and closer together, with schools, shops and restaurants within walking distance. The 55%–44% spread in favour of larger, more dispersed housing is broadly consistent with 2023 (57%) and modestly below the pandemic high (60% in July 2021).
The more useful layer is the demographic cuts. Preferences split sharply by race and ethnicity (White adults +14 points pro-spread-out versus the national average; Asian adults 25 points the other way), by partisanship (Republicans +16, Democrats -15), by current community type (rural +15, urban -16) and by education (postgrad -8). Age moves in one direction only: 18- to 29-year-olds are the single age group leaning walkable, and the preference for spread-out communities is strongest in working-age adults (30–64), not retirees.
The cleanest read is that current location is the strongest single predictor, people who live somewhere rural overwhelmingly want to keep living somewhere rural, and the same is true for urban residents. Partisanship layers on top of that and stretches the gap further: rural Republicans (84%) and urban Democrats (30%) sit at opposite ends of the spread-out preference spectrum even though both groups are answering the same hypothetical.
What this means for UK marketers
Three practical reads for UK retail, DTC and ecommerce marketers. The data is US, but the underlying patterns, density preference tracking current location, amplified by political identity and age, show up in UK data too. The ONS rural-urban classification gives the UK equivalents to work against.
Regional creative needs to stop being one creative for everyone. If 70% of rural residents want spread-out communities and 61% of urban residents want walkable ones, the same product can be sold honestly in both directions, garden equipment as "the space you've got" to rural postcodes, or "the balcony you actually use" to urban ones. Most UK ecommerce brands run a single national creative and lose conversion at both ends. Geo-segmenting paid social creatives by ONS rural-urban classifier, not just by city name, is the cheapest fix. For categories with strong density-sensitivity (home, garden, fitness, food, pets), the lift typically shows up inside two weeks of running split creative against geographically segmented audiences.
DTC fulfilment economics should follow the density preference, not fight it. If rural and suburban audiences explicitly value space and are willing to trade off proximity to shops, they will tolerate longer last-mile delivery windows, and often pay for it. Conversely, urban audiences who chose walkability are the ones most punished by slow delivery: there's no garden shed to stash a parcel and no spare time in the day to wait in. For UK ecommerce brands with mixed urban-suburban-rural customer bases, the split is operationally useful: invest premium delivery (same-day, evening windows, click-and-collect partnerships) into urban postcodes, and standardised next-day or 48-hour windows into the suburban and rural tail.
Age cohort flips the brief, not just the channel. 18- to 29-year-olds are the only group choosing walkability over space, and they are also the cohort most likely to be renting, sharing flats, and treating cities as the default. Anything sold on "more room", "the home you've earned", "upgrade your space" reads naturally to the 30–64 bracket and slightly alienating to under-30s, who are buying experiences over square footage. Brands sitting in lifestyle categories (interiors, hospitality, leisure, premium food and drink) should treat the under-30 brief as a different proposition entirely, not the same proposition translated. That matters when an audience overlaps with the UK discretionary-spending squeeze already reshaping Q2 planning: a 22-year-old London renter and a 48-year-old Cheshire homeowner are not in the same recession.
How they got the data
Pew Research Center conducted the survey online among 8,512 US adults between 20 and 26 January 2026. All respondents are members of the Center's American Trends Panel, recruited via address-based sampling to be representative of the adult US population. The published short read includes question wording, full topline responses, and the survey methodology document for the broader wave the question sat within.
The community-type question is a two-option forced-choice item asking respondents which of two communities they would prefer to live in: one with larger, more spread-out houses several miles from amenities, or one with smaller houses within walking distance of amenities. Pew has fielded the same question periodically since 2014, allowing the 2026 reading to be benchmarked against 2021 and 2023 waves.
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From Pew Research Center · published 19/03/2026