About once a week, over dinner or before collapsing into bed, I declare to no one in particular: I can't stand the traffic anymore. We need to move. This charade has been going on for at least five years, with the same results.

We haven't moved, and I still fight traffic when I must.

Except for brief periods, I have lived in the same town since early childhood. The ZIP Code has changed fewer than half a dozen times, but the last line of my mailing address has remained Miami, FL. It likely always will.

Yes, traffic is horrible, summer insufferable and the cost of living too high, but this is home. My children and grandchildren live here, as do my father and dozens of other relatives. I can walk to friends' homes. There may be greener pastures, but none could provide the same proximity to family.

I've been pondering the idea of place since a recent Gallup study funded by the Knight Foundation found that, despite its many warts, Miami had a bigger jump in community attachment over the past year than the other big cites surveyed. This despite a harsh recession, a battered real estate market and enough political shenanigans to fuel several new Carl Hiaasen novels.

I was surprised. Then again, maybe we simply like to complain. Though I hear plenty of people whine about congestion, job opportunities and hurricanes, most never move. Which leads me to believe there are intangibles to a place that make even the most exasperating concerns so much minutiae.

So what makes home home? How many years does it take to recognize the tug of the familiar, the call of the comfortable? Are there certain factors -- nearby family or affordable housing -- that play a bigger part in residents' attachment to their town? Do we forgive long commutes or smog or high property taxes if we can enjoy happy hour with our best bud every Friday night?

Called Soul of the Community, the three-year Gallup/Knight study of 26 U.S. communities explores some of these questions, trying to find out what draws residents to a place and what makes them want to stay. Two years into it, pollsters report that an area's physical beauty, its openness to all people and opportunities for socializing provide ``the emotional glue'' that binds people to a town.

Despite the national economic crisis, these top three qualities (eight lesser ones included education and safety) remained steady in all 26 communities. In Miami, people reported spending more time with close friends and family this past year, thereby developing stronger emotional attachments.

National magazines may not factor in such attachments when they formulate their top 10 lists of places to live or retire, but connection to those I love trumps practically everything else in my book. (Yes, even empty roads.)

When others talk about pulling up stakes, I wonder: Won't you miss stopping at a friend's to shoot the breeze on Saturday afternoon? Can you really forgo the easy jaunt across the highway to check up on a new grandbaby?

I've never been a great adventurer, the kind to push into uncharted territory with only a new job and an open address book in hand. For some of us, the best discoveries wait just around the corner, where appreciation makes the old seem new again.

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