Also, I would be willing to wager that the spread of housing prices has increased over time. That prices in the cities have grown much much faster.

So nowadays there are many people who want to live in a city but can't afford to, and there are many homeowners in the towns who haven't seen much appreciation of their largest asset.

Meanwhile back in the 50's someone could afford a house in the suburbs on a single income (a laughable concept today) because it wasn't many times more expensive than a house in a small town.