My spouse and I would love to move somewhere less expensive than NYC, but we just can't make it work. We're both in fairly specialized tech fields, and prioritize walkability, diversity, great schools and career growth opportunity. Outside of say Chicago, it's hard to come up with a place that checks those boxes.
If a person values a thing, saying, "well [thing] exists in these other cities too, there's just a whole lot less of it there" is maybe not a super effective counterpoint.
Like, I realize that basically every major city in the US does have public transit...technically. But pointing out that out is not useful when for most of those cities, said transit is slow, unreliable, sparse, and infrequent.
I don't just want transit. I want good transit. I don't just want walkability in a few isolated neighborhoods. I want widespread walkability.
However, unless your working in medical devices I wouldn't call it a hub like New York, Boston or the valley.
My wife is even harder on this line than I am. We live in Munich now, and the biggest reason she doesn't want to come back to the US is that she doesn't want to go back to driving everywhere, and there are only a few cities where a family can reasonably and easily get away without a car.
Firstly, I recognize this is just one factor. I focused on it because it's one I'm highly familiar with, not because it's the end-all be-all. I've already pointed this out in multiple comments. We could also talk about educational opportunities or tolerance/discrimination, but those things either aren't as clear cut or would be more contentious to discuss.
Americans saying they prefer cars when you ask makes sense when you consider the other options are usually hilariously bad wherever they live, and where they've lived in the past, too. Give them an option where walking and biking and transit actually work, and suddenly many people find those options desirable. Just look at how many American tourists say they love the transit system in, say, Tokyo, when they visit. Americans mostly "love cars" because they've been given no other serious options.
Lastly, while many people may not think of it in explicit terms, they may nonetheless enjoy some of the knock-on effects of urbanism, like a city "feeling more lively".
Car ownership is a multi thousand dollar expense, every year. Many people would be happier with that cash in their pocket.
I'm guilty of this, but I think your formulation is a straw man. All I want to tell people is that they shouldn't reflexively rule out the middle of the country, because a lot of people really would be happier there. Not everybody, but some people.
And the way (some people on) the coasts talk about the Midwest and the South is as though they're a complete and total non-starter that's out of consideration entirely. "Yeah, New York's expensive, but what am I going to do? Live in Cleveland? Obviously I can't do that!"
I think that kind of talk convinces a lot of people who would be happier somewhere else that they shouldn't even bother looking into those places. And that's a tragedy of human flourishing.
Edit to respond to one comment below:
> I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily.
On the contrary, I think you're inordinately focused on your own particular (and somewhat eccentric) issues. Most Americans prefer car ownership. You might think they're wrong to prefer this. I do, too! But, "I don't want to live somewhere where I have to own a car" isn't a mainstream American opinion.