What draws U.S. left-leaning folks to cities to begin with?
When you read up on U.S. political basics, you can’t help but come across the detail that many of the people in cities in the U.S. seem to lean left, yet what isn’t as clear is why and what influences their concentration in cities/urban areas.
Cities don’t exactly appear to be affordable, and left-leaning folks in the U.S. don’t seem to necessarily be much wealthier than right-leaning folks, so what’s contributed to this situation?
It’s where all the stuff is. We like stuff, varieties of stuff of all kinds. including types of people. Conservatives hate stuff, and are generally anti-variety, so they stay where the stuff isn’t. they want to feel safe from the stuff, and they never feel safe unless there is a substantial buffer zone between them and stuff and a stockpile of guns to protect themselves from stuff, or books about stuff.
Agreed with others that city living causes liberalism.
There’s a flip side too - rural areas experience many kinds of change more slowly and that can lead to conservatism. While we all enjoy new things, I feel like it’s easier to notice what is being lost - when things change - in a small rural community.
Maybe it’s just that we become used to putting up with older things and older social norms, so we feel the downsides less and so become less eager to replace them with what is next.
A less generous way of saying this is that in a small town it’s easier to not feel how much harm is being done by “the way we’ve always done it”.
My guess would be trust levels you have in other people. You are more trusting you have more people around you that you don’t know well, you tend to vote for policies that benefit people. Less trusts you want your own space to protect, want to associate with less people, don’t trust policies that you can’t see helping you out.
There really are! LOL. But you have to be willing to move across the country to get one, and they’re only good because there are fewer qualified people than companies need, so they have to create attractive work environments and compensation packages to attract talent. When that situation changes those good jobs go away.
I grew up in the city. My parents were punks. I lived in the city my whole life. I’m out in the hills now in my isolation. I get to interact with the people the left kind of ignores. I’m a tradesman. I work with and interact with a lot of well meaning smart but under educated people that get written off as nazis pretty much by alot of my peers. Now I’m not saying they are right, I’m just saying they’re working class and have the same immediate goals, they just happened to be indoctrinated af by the entire system around them and haven’t experienced different. Most mean well ime and good conversation is not out of the question. Hopefully we can avoid a potential masacre. I’d like to think my small interactions are making some tiny wave for the future. Progress is slow. I personally can’t live in the city anymore.
I’ve lived in several rural areas and I’ve never been to a rural area where there wasn’t at least one whole street dedicated to each political party. If the stereotype was true, Bernie Sanders wouldn’t be so glorified in his native Vermont (he grew up on what was a river island of farmers), the nation’s whitest and (after Alaska) most rural state.
Grew up in a small town and its just made me realize the koolaid everyone is chugging on a daily basis.
“city folk” aren’t trying to turn you gay and cut off your dick or gun, and most “country folk” really just want to live a simple life with some light work and independence, not kill all races/sexualities (the hardest workers I know couldn’t give more of a shit what other people do)
But hey divide and conquer works I guess, cause were all poor as fuck in the end
I’m not sure that it’s simply that a city attracts left leaning people.
I grew up conservative, religious, and from the country, and had to move to the city because that’s where my mom took us. My move to the left ocurred due to what the city offered: cultures. I was exposed to many other ways of thinking, to art, to music, to trends, to drugs. I came to see other types of people as just people like me, with different points of view but each deserving their own chance at the American dream. I also became atheist.
The city might attract the left, but it also creates the left.
Incidentally, I want to move to a more secluded part of the state, probably where you’d see the F**k Biden billboards. We can’t all be pigeon holed so easily.
I concur, cities are cosmopolitan in their nature. Being confronted to diversity brings socialist ideas more easily than living in a secluded countryside, where everyone is the same.
Though it can bring rejection and discrimination as easily.
Exactly where I was going to go with it. This question comes with a lot of assumptions about causation rather than just examining the correlation of political views and population density.
It’s as weird as asking the question as “why are conservatives moving to the middle of nowhere?”
Tbh I was considering flipping the question and asking, “Why aren’t leftists moving to rural areas?” but that seemed a similarly mucked up form of the question.
The question wasn’t aiming to be academic, so wasn’t carefully formed to account for causation and examining demographic details, but regardless, it could be better. I’m simply not sure how I might better ask the sort of question I’d like to ask to get the kind of info & responses that would satisfy my curiosity concerning this area.
Despite the malformed query, some of the responses here have given some useful insights, direct or indirect as they may be.
Edit:
Also, despite several of the anecdotes about moving to the city and city life influencing them to more left-leaning views, part of what influenced this question is experience in rural areas and developing as a leftist there among other left-leaning folks.
I think if you had asked " “Why aren’t leftists moving to rural areas?” " you’d get a lot of “because rural areas suck” answers. Because holy shit unless you’re there specifically for nature and isolation they’re inferior on every metric.
I’ve lived in both rural and urban areas. Rural areas do indeed suck. People there lead boring purposeless lives so they’re always up in your business. If you keep to yourself they’ll just make shit up. This is not a problem in the city.
Incidentally, I want to move to a more secluded part of the state, probably where you’d see the F**k Biden billboards. We can’t all be pigeon holed so easily.
I’m trying to move to the sticks right now, and a high likelihood of having trumpers for neighbors is honestly one of the things that’s bothering me the most.
I’d say it’s really simple. Cities have more laws than rural areas. Government is more complex in a city, and conservatives are defined by their desire for simple government.
In the countryside, the conservative ideal is actually possible. In the city, you can’t just hunt for food and be self reliant; you have to be part of a complex mesh of society.
All cities also tend to have tremendous cultural output. There’s music and art here. Conservatives aren’t known for embracing new culture…
You’re more likely to find your people if you’re looking for something outside of the utter mainstream here. The suburbs aren’t known having strong queer scenes, a wide and deep variety of faiths, and so on. Conservatives also tend to drop the ball on this.
I think liberals in general tend to be more optimistic and open to change and doing things new ways. Small towns tend to harbor pessimism, yearning for days gone, and a more strict adherence to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I remember countless times I was frustrated with folks doing things one way, “because it’s always been done that way.” An example from my childhood is the lunch room at the school, there were two doors but students were only allowed to use one, which always became a choke point. When I asked why they don’t just change that policy, they said “because that’s how we’ve always done it [and it works well enough].”
As for why this mentality prevails, I think it’s because there are few stabilizing forces in a small town, often just a handful of business control the economy; I think that naturally ties people to being fearful of change that might harm the stability of said businesses, and many small towns have been burned. If you lose your job in the city, there’s a pretty good chance you can just get another one with reasonably comparable pay. If you lose your job in a small town, you might have to get a whole new town and leave long time friends (or enter a period of emotionally draining economic hardship – my family chose the later in the 09 financial crisis, neither option is great).
Cities also tend to offer more choices, amenities, better health care, better emergency services (read faster, much much faster), lower utility bills, and in the right neighborhood (with a bit of work) an equally (if not more) cozy relationship with neighbors… the mindset is why you leave, these things are why you stay.
Cities have a bad wrap with some because of… a variety of forces in the last decade, but IMO that’s reversing and “living in the inner city” isn’t a bad thing anymore; the blip in human history where cities became unpopular and undesirable is reversing.
I hate the “if it works, don’t fix it” mentality. I have to fight it all the time at work. Personally, I think it comes from an inability or lack of motivation to consider how something could be better, or a lack of curiosity
You have it backwards. Living in cities (and especially growing up there) move you to the left. You see people suffering and you know it’s not entirely their fault. You get to know other cultures, eat at their restaurants, hear their music etc.
Maybe, but I’m asking what draws those that may be more left-leaning to them apart from those already there, given aforementioned cost of living issues.
Again, you have this backwards. I’m suggesting that exposure to people and their cultures “moves you to the left”. Being “drawn to the right” is easier in isolation from other cultures.
If you live in a place and most of what you know comes from talk radio and Joe Rogan you will have a very different view of the world than if you live in a major city.
I understand what you (and others responding similarly) are suggesting, but that doesn’t address the question I’m asking, which is inspired in part by the fact that there are folks on the left that don’t come from the cities, but may eventually find themselves there.
The responses that have addressed that question have related the variety of stuff as a draw, economic opportunities (albeit that runs into unaddressed problems concerning how one affords the move & living), cultural variety, and the like. Those address the question better than the supposition that I have this backwards, and that cities serve as the primary producers of leftism.
That being said, I’m not dismissing those expressing that view, as I don’t think it’s entirely wrong, only that they appear (in some instances) to be overlooking rural leftists in favor of their view that cities just are or produce leftists and rural areas just are or produce only right-leaning folks/conservatives. Those may be the prevailing trends, but trends are not the whole picture.
Just adding that this is not a US-only phenomenon. It’s all over the Western world. It just seems so much prevalent in the US because of the polarized political situation and because of the two-party, winner-take-all electoral system.
This is a huge factor. Rural people pay all of their taxes but from their perspective, they are getting nothing back. There is no point in building a huge new Hospital 50 miles from any settlement, nobody can use it and it will be a complete waste. Why would they ever vote for politicians that plan on spending taxes to fund services, when another group is saying they will cut taxes?
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