When asked what city they'd most like to live in when they grow up, it's apparent that American teens don't all have a single destination in mind -- a nationwide sample of 439 teens named 127 different cities, everywhere from Lubbock, Texas, to Tokyo. Obviously, many teens would prefer to stay in the area where they grew up -- but the most common specific response to this open-ended question in the latest Gallup Youth Survey* was New York City, mentioned by 11% of teens overall. Five percent of teens mentioned Los Angeles or Hollywood, while 4% said a small town or rural area. No other city received more than 2% of mentions.
Big cities have long held allure for young people with big dreams. "Cities are fantastically dynamic places," wrote Jane Jacobs in her classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, "and this is strikingly true of their successful parts, which offer a fertile ground for the plans of thousands of people."
Some teens may also be influenced by the fact that big cities -- and New York in particular -- tend to be the center of the American TV universe. According to another question in the same youth survey, 90% of teens say they "watched TV yesterday." Popular new and syndicated TV shows such as "Sex in the City," "NYPD Blue," "Seinfeld," "Friends," -- all of them showcase New York City as the place to be. (See "Teens Drawn to Bright Lights, Big Cities" in Related Items.)
Girls are twice as likely as boys to name New York City as their destination of choice, 15% compared with 7%. Teen girls may be more influenced by the Big Apple's glamorous status as a center of high fashion (dramatized by the "Sex in the City" fashionista foursome).
Bottom Line
New York's appeal isn't relegated to teens. In a 1997 Gallup Poll, Americans aged 18 and older were asked, "As I read a series of characteristics, please let me know what large city in the United States comes to mind. How about the city in which you would most like to live?" New York City was the most commonly mentioned city.
New York City's population increased by 9.4% between 1990 and 2000, a period when populations were declining in many other northeastern cities. With many of today's teens hoping to call New York home, a decline there seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.
*The Gallup Youth Survey is conducted via an Internet methodology provided by Knowledge Networks, using an online research panel that is designed to be representative of the entire U.S. population. The current questionnaire was completed by 439 respondents, aged 13 to 17, Aug. 8-19, 2004. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points.