What If No One Is Actually Bowling Alone?

Of all the major social divides in U.S., perhaps none is more visible than the one between urbanites and suburbanites. Urbanites take public transit, eat at restaurants, and stay out late. The reason they’re in cities, after all, is to take advantage of the amenities and lifestyle they offer. Suburbanites, by contrast, drive to work alone, nest at home, and go out a lot less. Or at least, those are the common stereotypes.

But as it is often true in politics, so is how we socialize: demographics is destiny. Once we account for that, America’s urbanites and suburbanites start to look a lot less different from one another.

A recent study by Eric Morris of Clemson University and Deirdre Pfeiffer of Arizona State University in Journal of Planning Education and Research puts these well-worn assumptions to the test. To get at this, the study uses American Time Use Surveys from 2003 to 2013 to examine the differences in the ways suburbanites and city-dwellers use their time on a day to day basis.