I'm with Mitch on this one. When I was 17 in 1975 and agonising over buying a proper racing bike or taking the "Leonardo da Vinci" to the Mediterranean (the ship won!) and trolling all of the bike shops etc... it was ALL low flange on the primo stuff except the French bikes. Low flange meant cool and quality, simple as that. Now you could put a gun to my head and I couldn't tell you the advantage of high vs. low, but to this day, the nod goes to small flange. High flange is 1950s-1960s to me.
Peter Kohler
Washington DC