USA - People
The transformation of the United States from a predominantly rural nation to an urbanized society constituted one of the most profound demographic shifts in American history. At the nation's founding in 1790, only five percent of Americans lived in urban areas, with the vast majority residing on farms or in small rural communities. The Industrial Revolution accelerated urbanization dramatically, as factories concentrated in cities drew millions of workers from the countryside and from abroad. By 1920, the urban population exceeded the rural population for the first time, marking a fundamental reordering of American life. This trend continued throughout the twentieth century, with cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas becoming the dominant form of settlement.
By 2020, over eighty percent of Americans lived in metropolitan areas, with cities serving as centers of economic activity, cultural production, educational institutions, and political power. The density and diversity of urban life created complex governance challenges unknown in rural areas, requiring sophisticated bureaucracies, elaborate human resources systems, and intricate regulatory frameworks to manage everything from sanitation and transportation to education and public safety. Cities became home to major universities, hospitals, corporations, and government agencies—large institutions with formalized procedures and professional management that stood in stark contrast to the more informal, personal relationships that characterized rural communities.
Yet even as cities grew in size and importance, a strain of American political thought maintained deep suspicion of urban life and its effects on republican virtue. Thomas Jefferson articulated this anti-urban sentiment most clearly, celebrating the independent yeoman farmer as the foundation of democratic society while viewing cities as sources of corruption, dependence, and mob rule. "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body," Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, expressing a conviction that urban density bred social pathology. This Jeffersonian tradition valorized rural life as producing citizens who were self-reliant, morally upright, and politically independent, while regarding city dwellers as dependent on employers, susceptible to demagoguery, and divorced from the natural rhythms that supposedly instilled wisdom and virtue. The agrarian ideal persisted in American political culture long after the nation ceased to be predominantly agricultural, manifesting in recurring anxieties about urban corruption, the celebration of small-town values, and suspicion of cosmopolitan elites concentrated in coastal cities. This cultural preference for rural authenticity over urban sophistication created a lasting tension in American politics, with cities often portrayed as alien spaces whose residents held values fundamentally at odds with those of "real America." The political geography of contemporary America—with dense, diverse cities voting Democratic and rural areas voting Republican—represented a modern instantiation of conflicts with deep historical roots in competing visions of American identity and virtue.
The 2024 presidential election revealed a significant political realignment within America's urban centers, as cities that had long served as Democratic strongholds experienced notable shifts toward Republican candidate Donald Trump. While cities remained predominantly Democratic in their voting patterns, the magnitude of the shift proved remarkable and potentially consequential for future electoral politics. Trump improved his performance in major metropolitan areas compared to 2020, even as he secured victory in both the Electoral College and the popular vote nationally. This urban shift occurred against a backdrop of longstanding assumptions about the nature of American political geography—that diverse, institutionally complex cities naturally gravitated toward Democratic candidates, while more homogeneous exurban and rural areas, characterized by cultures of individualism, reliably supported Republicans. The 2024 results suggested that this geographic sorting, while still operative, had weakened considerably, with urban voters expressing discontent with Democratic governance at the municipal level even as they continued to vote for Democratic candidates, albeit by diminished margins.
The erosion of Democratic margins in cities appeared closely tied to visible failures in urban governance that had accumulated over the preceding years. Homelessness reached crisis proportions in numerous major cities, with encampments becoming permanent fixtures in downtown areas and residential neighborhoods. Open-air drug markets operated with apparent impunity in cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Portland. Retail theft increased dramatically in many urban centers, leading to store closures and the installation of security measures that transformed the shopping experience. Public transit systems, already weakened by pandemic-era ridership declines, struggled with safety concerns that kept commuters away. These quality-of-life issues proved particularly salient to urban voters who experienced them daily and who had previously tolerated Democratic governance in exchange for effective management of city services. When that management appeared to fail, voters began reconsidering their partisan loyalties, even if they did not fully abandon them. The mismanagement of American cities thus emerged as a potential contributing factor to Trump's victory, as urban discontent spread beyond city limits to influence suburban and swing-state voters who viewed urban dysfunction as a preview of broader Democratic governance failures.
Michael Shellenberger's 2021 book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities provided one influential framework for understanding urban decline as a consequence of specific progressive policy choices rather than as an inevitable result of structural forces beyond government control. Shellenberger, a longtime Bay Area resident who had previously advocated for progressive environmental and social policies, undertook a critical reexamination of the policy approaches that dominated governance in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. He argued that homelessness, drug addiction, and crime had worsened not despite progressive policies but because of them. Specifically, Shellenberger contended that "harm reduction" approaches to drug addiction, which provided clean needles and supervised consumption sites without requiring treatment or sobriety, enabled continued drug use rather than recovery. He maintained that Housing First policies, which placed homeless individuals in permanent housing without requiring sobriety or treatment compliance, failed to address underlying addiction and mental health issues while consuming enormous resources. He criticized what he termed "radical compassion"—a reluctance to enforce laws against public camping, drug use, and quality-of-life offenses—as perpetuating rather than alleviating human suffering. Shellenberger's critique gained traction among urban residents frustrated with visible disorder and among commentators seeking to explain why ostensibly well-intentioned policies produced disappointing outcomes.
The Hoover Institution, Stanford University's conservative-leaning public policy think tank, launched a dedicated initiative examining urban governance failures under the banner "Broken Cities." This project brought together scholars, policy analysts, and journalists to document and critique what they characterized as the consequences of liberal social policies in major American cities. The initiative produced research papers, essays, and multimedia content analyzing issues ranging from homelessness and crime to fiscal mismanagement and regulatory excess. The Hoover scholars argued that progressive governance created self-reinforcing cycles of dysfunction: permissive policies toward disorder attracted populations requiring intensive services, straining municipal budgets; high taxes and regulations drove away businesses and middle-class residents, eroding the tax base; and ideological commitments to specific policy approaches prevented course correction even when outcomes proved disappointing. The "Broken Cities" project represented a sustained intellectual effort to attribute urban problems not to inevitable urban complexity or insufficient resources, but to specific choices made by progressive policymakers who prioritized ideological purity over pragmatic effectiveness.
Complementing these analytical efforts, cultural commentary on urban governance found expression in podcasts like "Blue City Blues," which explored the politics, culture, and governance challenges facing America's most Democratic cities. The podcast examined how ideological homogeneity in deeply blue urban areas potentially contributed to policy failures by eliminating political competition and accountability. When Democratic politicians faced no meaningful electoral threat from Republicans, they answered primarily to progressive activists and interest groups rather than to median voters. This dynamic potentially incentivized increasingly progressive policy positions that satisfied activist bases but alienated moderate residents. The podcast and similar cultural commentary reflected broader questions about whether one-party dominance, regardless of ideology, inevitably produced governance failures by eliminating the corrective mechanisms that political competition traditionally provided.
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