I've lived in the city for my entire life. I hate the all the people ontop eachother, litter, noise, smells, dysfunction, snobbishness, traffic etc. I don't understand how seemingly most people want to move in the opposite direction. No, they are not hotbeds for muh crime wave and no, I am not paranoid or racist. The only time where the city is more or less livable is during summer break when half the population is being a plague somewhere else.
I can't wait to gtfo of here and live somewhere rural. Preferably somewhere so boring that it sees minimal tourism.
I suspect it might be a mix of cars, zeitgeist ('I am just living for me, and I'm going to stake my own exclusive parcel of space out bunched up among all these other private individual parcels'), and feeling like just a number in a filing drawer of people-boxes.
American cities completely suck, but they suck less in many ways if they have a feeling of being composed of approachable and understandable segments rather than as one big expanse.