America is built for driving. There’s hidden demand for something better.

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Maybe you’ve heard this unkind old joke about American culture: We will pay a small fortune to amble through the cobblestone streets of Rome and Paris, or even the ersatz Main Street in Disneyland. Then we’ll return to our suburban homes and two-car garages, and swear that a place like that could never work here.

There’s a sad truth to this. In cities and suburbs across the country, a vocal contingent of Americans devote themselves to resisting change that could bring denser, more pedestrian-oriented development to their backyards. Many people I talk to about my work on American cities share the sense that streets built around walking might be a charming holdover for societies enlightened enough to preserve them, but sprawl-loving Americans simply don’t want to live that way. Earlier this year, Pew published a survey that seemed to confirm this: “Majority of Americans prefer spread-out communities with

But that framing was unfortunate, because it emphasizes precisely the wrong takeaway about Americans’ preferences for how they want to live.

Pew’s own data, along with other evidence on the question, suggests there’s substantial pent-up appetite for a walking-friendly way of life in the US — and not nearly enough supply of places that can satiate it.

There are many reasons it’s hard for us to build that way in the 21st century, but a simple lack of demand isn’t one of them. Our shortage of places designed for walking reflects one of the most tangible but rarely voiced domains in which Americans lack freedom and choice.

In the land of the free, it should not be so hard to walk to buy a little treat! And building more places where the pleasures and necessities of daily life are close at hand does not mean eliminating the lower-density, driving-oriented communities that many other Americans prefer.

The top-line claim from Pew’s nationally representative survey is correct: 55 percent of the 8,512 respondents said they prefer to live in a place where “houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away.”

But the more interesting and telling finding is how many said the opposite: 44 percent of Americans — approaching half the country! — would rather live where homes are “smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance.”

That number is much higher than the share of Americans who can actually meet their daily needs on foot — and a country split 55–44 on how it wants to live shouldn’t be built overwhelmingly for the 55 percent. An analysis from Smart Growth America, a nonprofit that advocates for compact, mixed-use development, finds that 6.8 percent of Americans live in walkable communities in the country’s 35 biggest metro areas. A separate 2025 study, meanwhile, estimated that only 10.8 percent live in places designated “most walkable” by the EPA.

Other surveys have found an even larger constituency for neighborhoods where daily errands don’t require a car. In a recent survey by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), using a sample of 2,000 adults in the 50 largest US metro areas, 59 percent said they prefer “houses with small yards, and it is easy to walk to the places you need to go.” The remaining 41 percent would choose “houses with large yards, and you have to drive to the places where you need to go.”