In yesterday's column, David Brooks interpreted the recent Pew survey on how Americans feel about where they live. They, apparently, love sprawl.

The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present.

Second, Americans still want to move outward. City dwellers are least happy with where they live, and cities are one of the least popular places to live. Only 52 percent of urbanites rate their communities "excellent" or "very good," compared with 68 percent of suburbanites and 71 percent of the people who live in rural America.

Third, Americans still want to go west. The researchers at Pew asked Americans what metro areas they would like to live in. Seven of the top 10 were in the West: Denver, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento. The other three were in the South: Orlando, Tampa and San Antonio. Eastern cities were down the list and Midwestern cities were at the bottom.

Brooks then deduces that the absence of Chicago and New York on the list means that even the Americans who say they want to live in cities don't really want to live in cities—they want to live in car-y suburbs. (And rounds out the fantasy with a rhapsody about the garages of Denver and Seattle: "These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage — filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment.")

San Francisco's Streetsblog calls bullshit:

In today's Times, the nation's most famous sprawl apologist cites a recent Pew study to argue his case... One could just as easily spin cherry-picked Pew data to argue against the Brooks point of view:

* Americans are all over the map in their views about their ideal community type: 30% say they would most like to live in a small town, 25% in a suburb, 23% in a city and 21% in a rural area.

See, most Americans would prefer to live in a city or small town. I could say that they hunger for walkability and "dense community," but I won't, because the Pew study is not a useful barometer of American preferences for urban form and transportation options.

The findings are a little baffling. Orlando? San Antonio? And Phoenix? What, exactly, do Americans like so much about these cities? Are they just feeling cold?

(And if you haven't read Salon's hit on Brooks for calling lobbyists "experts" and wearing beltway-blinders, "incapable of finding fault with political power," you might enjoy it.)

Photo from Rich Lem Flickr.