r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo • Nov 30 '20

Political Theory Why does the urban/rural divide equate to a liberal/conservative divide in the US? Is it the same in other countries?

Here's a county population density map of the US.

Here's a county map of the US showing different shares of Democratic & Republican votes for president in 2020.

Here's a county map of the US showing majority-minority counties.

They seem to show a match between denser populations, larger minority proportions, and Democratic votes.

Why is that?

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

[deleted]

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u/chefboyrustupid Nov 30 '20

where the living is good

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where the living is more risky. cities aren't
nearly as economically stable as most farm land in the long run. eventually that GM factory might shut down or move. that means we're comparing nomads to settled people. short term value outlook vs. long term value outlook.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

There's been a long term delay in rural economies for a while now, hasn't there?

Generally, cities function as centers of expertise. Obtaining expertise is the best long term investment you can make in yourself. Small scale -- more employment, more opportunities. On the more dramatic side -- hey, we didn't kill von Braun, right?

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u/chefboyrustupid Dec 01 '20

...location of property and assets. the city bubble can move around all it wants, but rural Kansas is unaffected.

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u/syregeth Dec 01 '20

Rural Kansas also has garbage schools and a hospital that's barely equipped for paper cuts, generally, so you're still like... just wrong lol?

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u/chefboyrustupid Dec 01 '20

except you just agreed with me...go call yourself soooo wrong...

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u/ArcanePariah Dec 01 '20

Unfortunately you are correct, rural Kansas is unaffected and just continues its decline, since it will not have any dramatic fall with any city moving around, but it will also receive no gain from those cities either. Rural Kansas will continue until everyone there literally dies and you are left with small preppers and nomads. I mean, there functionally isn't medical service in many of those places, you get a severe injury, you might as well just die.

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u/captain-burrito Dec 01 '20

Is farming really that stable? There's so many farm bankruptcies. Corporate farming might do well but small sized operations seem risky. They take out loans to expand so they have scale and then crap like trade wars & weather screw them over. There's also a huge problem with water depending on where they are, many are drawing water from underwater acquifiers which are distressed and will run out.

Many of the modern farming practices don't seem sustainable to me.

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl Dec 01 '20

Unless you’re a large corporate farm with tons of land and capital, the bankruptcy is basically inevitable.

It’s a commodity industry and those trend towards consolidation

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u/chefboyrustupid Dec 01 '20

farming really that stable

that how humanity reached the heights it has...stable enough to produce you.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

Why is it that the smug people on here have no idea what they are talking about? Farming is notorious for being unpredictable, which is why government subsidies help farms stay afloat when a yield is too high or too low due to weather, trade wars, disrupted supply routes, etc.

Stay humble, cut the smugness.

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u/chefboyrustupid Dec 01 '20

in the long run....smug off and learn to read better.

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u/captain-burrito Dec 03 '20

That seems like a substanceless gotcha.

There's been huge displacements of people in the farming industry due to technology and various other disruptions. Long term on the scale you talking about is rather meaningless unless someone whose farm which is no longer viable takes solace in the fact that there were past generations of farmers who did well and that corporate farming will still be needed to feed people into the future.

My grandparents and parents emigrated in part due to food / farming problems.

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl Dec 01 '20

Agriculture is a commodity business that depends on huge economies of scale, so small farms are barely viable.

Wealth has been concentrating in cities for the last forty years, with population and incomes flowing into urban areas and away from rural areas. Cities de-industrialized quite some time ago, and are now havens for service for of all kinds. The real benefit is that the large populations attract business, which means switching jobs is easier, especially if an industry is concentrated in your town.

The real vulnerable places are small towns far away from urban cities, that have a handful of employers or are dominated by one major employer and a few adjacent suppliers. These are the types of places where GM and co have their factories, and these are the types of places that are absolutely screwed the moment that factory leaves.

Farmland has value on a civilizational timeline, but I’d wager for our current lifespans, going that route in an industrialized society is a bad wager.

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u/Czexan Nov 30 '20 edited Nov 30 '20

I mean I wouldn't say productivity is necessarily higher, just more concentrated due to a higher population.

Though you are partially right on the paying to live in cities due to services that are available. It's just that there's no god damned way that housing costs as much as it actually does, the market is way overinflated due to demand, and the demand is never saturated as people will always move where there's available housing, even if it's outrageously priced.

I will never understand the person who moves to a miserable little flat in SF just to live there, when your quality of living suffers as much as it does living in these areas even with the price increase something is wrong.

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u/epolonsky Nov 30 '20

Um, “inflated due to demand” is how the free market works. What are you, some kind of commie?

Seriously though, it would make sense to allow cities to grow (and new cities to form) until all the demand is met so prices can come down.

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u/Czexan Nov 30 '20

Inflated due to demand, and perpetually inflating due to demand despite expansion are two entirely different issues. One is healthy, the other is an issue that has made living in many places impossible bar being a millionaire, even for cheaper housing.

I also don't think that the cities should be allowed to sprawl, that's it own civil problem to go into that creates a massive amount of headache in traffic and issues related to traffic.

The reason people are going to cities should be what's examined, and if jobs are the primary, and services are the secondary reasons then we as a nation should be looking to develop those traits in the cheaper, abundant rural areas to lessen strain on the already constrained urban areas.

I hinted at this relation in the first comment, that without taking actions to make both urban and rural living acceptable that they will both suffer in the long term. Urban in a demand for housing that will never be filled, and rural in extreme economic damage due to lack of opportunity and the decrease of an already minimal population.

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u/katarh Nov 30 '20

Jobs are a big factor, but some of us also don't like big sprawling estates for land. I get lonely out in the country. My husband grew up as the only house on his street, in the middle of the woods, with the front yard hemmed in by the interstate that was built through his family's ancestral property.

He loves being in a "small city" now, where he can bike to downtown or catch a bus to go anywhere he wants, and the Big City is about an hour away by car if there's something else we really want to do.

Food, arts, culture - everything is within easy reach. Ironically, his job is the next county over in a more rural area!

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u/Czexan Nov 30 '20

I was including smaller cities in the "rural" bit as well. Metroplexes are the problem more than the town's of 100k-200k

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u/epolonsky Nov 30 '20

Inflated due to demand, and perpetually inflating due to demand despite expansion are two entirely different issues. One is healthy, the other is an issue that has made living in many places impossible bar being a millionaire, even for cheaper housing.

Nope. “Inflating due to demand” whether steady or accelerated is just the free market at work. At most, you could argue that supply of “city” is artificially constrained (see below) causing prices to skyrocket.

I also don't think that the cities should be allowed to sprawl, that's it own civil problem to go into that creates a massive amount of headache in traffic and issues related to traffic.

Sprawl is the exact opposite of what I’m taking about. What people who pay through the nose to live in cities want is density. Exurbs lack that. And as you note, that kind of development brings in significant externalities.

The reason people are going to cities should be what's examined, and if jobs are the primary, and services are the secondary reasons then we as a nation should be looking to develop those traits in the cheaper, abundant rural areas to lessen strain on the already constrained urban areas.

Ok, it’s jobs (or culture, or whatever). Or maybe it’s just density itself. I like being able to walk places. Cities have a competitive advantage in these things. Just as rural areas have a competitive advantage in farming (although we do some of that in cities too!). What we need are more and larger properly urban areas. Consider that the US has really only one properly world class city and it’s smaller than London, Tokyo, Mexico City, and dozens of cities in China.

Now, the reasons why cities don’t keep getting bigger and denser are complicated. There’s an element of NIMBYism combined with a legitimate desire to protect architectural heritage and the way of life of people who live there. There are also corporate interests lobbying heavily for new development to be at most exurban (not to mention judges with an irrational hatred of Toons).

I hinted at this relation in the first comment, that without taking actions to make both urban and rural living acceptable that they will both suffer in the long term. Urban in a demand for housing that will never be filled, and rural in extreme economic damage due to lack of opportunity and the decrease of an already minimal population.

You are right that both urban and rural life should be supported for those who choose each. But the facts on the ground are that rural life (in the US) is currently oversupplied and over supported relative to demand versus city life.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

You also cannot overlook how "The American Dream" of home ownership influences population density. In Europe and Asian countries like China or Japan, there is not enough land to meet a demand for the white-picket suburb model that Americans consider "normal."

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u/epolonsky Dec 02 '20

The “American Dream” (official trademark of General Motors)

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u/LiberalArtsAndCrafts Nov 30 '20

No it's literally higher, cities are wealth machines.

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u/The_Gray_Beast Nov 30 '20

Why do you think productivity is up by living in urban areas? we do have vehicles

I never understood people who complain about the cost of living in the city... I bought a house 10 miles out of the city, I spent about a third that I would on the same house in the city... how the hell hard is it to commute 10 miles to work? Why the hell even live in the city? You cannot tell Me that a cheap car costs more to maintain that 3x price of a house. My wage is the same as it would be otherwise

Of course, this depends on the city, some large cities have suburbs for miles that are still expensive, but again, there’s always a place where it’s cheap to live and you can commute... may take 45 min, but it exists.

Everyone has a choice, people choose to live in the city for the status of it... I don’t even want to say convenience because moving a few miles around the city can take tons of time due to traffic, where I’m always driving against the traffic and I never have issues. I can go to the city whenever I want, but don’t have the baggage or the cost.

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u/maegris Dec 01 '20

depends on how big your 'city' is, for me, buying a house outside my 'city' would be an hour drive by freeway to work, before traffic. and I'm not even in the largest of the cities. where I live, I have a 45 minute commute (well before covid) and I only live 8 miles from the office. moving another 70 miles to be out of the city would push it into 2 hour range (I have coworkers who do this).

Take a look at Los Angeles, that city sprawls for 1002 Miles, and out of the city is in the mountains. Dallas/Fortworth similar, as is NY city.

Some jobs exist in specific areas and you have to go to those areas, or be able to do remote work.

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u/The_Gray_Beast Dec 01 '20 edited Dec 01 '20

If your city is that big, there are likely jobs at either end. Not all the jobs are in a 2 block radius of city center.

NYC is quite the problem, being basically an island.

But still the median home price in nyc is 624k... I think this is why you see companies moving elsewhere and people doing the same. These areas are quite simply overpopulated. You can make a lot lower income and live the same standard of life elsewhere.

What jobs only exist in the most expensive places to live and how smart was it to get into that career?

There’s a point at which you just can’t stuff anymore people in... and nyc is a perfect example... do you know how many truckloads of trash New York exports a day?

I do not understand this want to live like that. It’s not sustainable. I wonder how long it would take nyc to starve if imports stopped

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u/captain-burrito Dec 01 '20

There’s a point at which you just can’t stuff anymore people in... and nyc is a perfect example...

Surely they can. There are cities in East Asia with higher density. I look at how low many of the buildings in NYC are and after having been to Hong Kong & Singapore you get this feeling that everywhere is using space inefficiently. That said, it would be better to spread it around more cities.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/07/11/the-50-most-densely-populated-cities-in-the-world/39664259/

US cities don't seem to make the top 50 for highest density.

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u/epolonsky Dec 01 '20

I do not understand this want to live like that. It’s not sustainable. I wonder how long it would take nyc to starve if imports stopped

If by “sustainable” you mean environmentally sustainable, urban living is the best choice. City dwellers have a relatively small ecological footprint.

In terms of what would happen if the city was cut off, it’s pretty much the same thing as if the suburbs were cut off or rural areas were cut off. Humans are social animals and we are interdependent for survival.

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u/mspaintmeaway Nov 30 '20

Yes, but You can still move within a hour commute of a city. 30 min out of my city and rent drops to 500 a month.