One half of Americans Who Live or Work in the Suburbs Wish Their Environment Offered More

New York, New York - A new poll conducted on behalf of Fairfax County (Virginia) Economic Development Authority has revealed that living or working in the suburbs might not be all that it's cracked up to be. Of the one in three (32%) Americans who reportedly live in a suburban environment, a majority (51%) wishes their community had more of a wide variety of offerings.

Items that the majority of suburbanites are looking for more of include: access to convenient public transportation (23%), a broad array of housing options (22%), a walkable environment (22%), arts, sporting events and other entertainment options (21%), cultural diversity (19%), and closer proximity to a regional or local job core that provides close jobs to where they live (17%). In fact, 52% of these individuals say that they would move to a community that offered more of these things, while 44% of those looking for more still wouldn't move to a different community.

Focusing on the workplace, nearly three in ten (28%) working Americans say that they work in a suburban setting, suggesting that many are still enduring a commute into the urban core where four in ten (40%) report working. Among those who do work in the suburbs, nearly one half (47%) wish that that environment offered more.

Among those who yearn for an improved working environment in the suburbs, one quarter are looking for good use of green space (23%), while others want more of a broad array of employers and work environments (20%), access to convenient to public transit for easier commuting (17%), cultural diversity (16%), a walkable environment (14%), and closer proximity to housing options (12%). Among those who are looking for more in their suburban working environment, nearly one half (47%) would change jobs or employers to be in a location that offered more of these things. However, a majority (52%) would not.

For the survey, a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans (523 working Americans) was interviewed by telephone via Ipsos' U.S. Telephone Express omnibus. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate within 177 3.1 percentage points (177 4.4 for the working sample), 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire population of adults in the U.S. been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/gender composition reflects that of the actual U.S. population according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

For more information on this news release, please contact: Sean Simpson Research Manager Ipsos Public Affairs 416.572.4474 [email protected]

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