The number of people who left cities is a remarkably small part of the US population and many of them just left high-cost cities for other lower-cost cities.

The steady increase in % of the US population who live in cities (83% in 2023 up from 70% in 2022) [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/urba...] suggests that yes, Americans do in fact want to live in cities.

> Despite the increase in the urban population, urban areas, defined as densely developed residential, commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for 80.0% of the U.S. population, down from 80.7% in 2010.

> This small decline was largely the result of changes to the criteria for defining urban areas implemented by the Census Bureau, including raising the minimum population threshold for qualification from 2,500 to 5,000.

Would people prefer rural areas if those areas had equal amounts of jobs? Maybe, maybe not. But since they don't, I think it's totally fair to say that the proportion of people who "want" to live in cities is increasing.

Look, i'm a country boy. I've learned how to kill and remove feathers from a chicken when i was 8 or 9. I know more about orchard than fields, but still i could drive old machines by 11 (then life happened). I know how to build a fence and/or a stone wall. We left for a "big" city (10k people). Life was so much better there, even when we had almost no money and had to eat boiled potatoes for months. I will never live in the countryside again, and i'm an introvert. My mother went back ~10 years ago, and already want to go back live in a small city, because driving at least half an hour to do anything, everyday, is really, really hard when you aren't retired yet (and especially in winter, however warm it is).

[edit] I've also lived in suburbia for 4 years, it's barely better than the countryside, so if your choice is between the two, chose countryside.