Where Americans want to live: Las Vegas makes the Top 20

By Joe Brown

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009 | 12:56 p.m.

In a national study released today, Las Vegas ranks among the top 20 major U.S. cities in which Americans would like to live.

We're number 20.

Hey, we'll take it. No questions asked.

After all, making the top 20 is pretty dang good, don't you think? Denver came in on top in the study by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, which further breaks down who wants to live where by demographics -- more men than women want to live in Vegas by a margin of 14%, for instance, according to the report.

Vegas comes in just behind Houston on the list, and we squeaked out Riverside, California. The bottom five: Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Cleveland -- and dead last, Detroit.

The study -- which carries the subtitle "For Half of America, the Grass is Greener Somewhere Else -- doesn't get into why people want to live a particular city. The report finds that about half (48%) of the public would rather live in a different type of community from the one they’re living in now – a sentiment that is most prevalent among city-dwellers.

The findings emerge from a wide-ranging telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,260 adults, conducted from Oct. 3-19, 2008. An earlier Pew report based on other questions from the same survey, found that nearly one in four adults (23%) say the place they consider home "in their heart" isn’t where they are living now.

Among other statistics of note, the study says that 26% of registered Democrats would like to move to Las Vegas, compared to 16% of Republicans.