Dan Savage joins me on Volts to discuss how NIMBY-captured city leadership is failing Democrats — and why making cities better is the key to building the party’s future.
The places where food is grown and energy is produced (Cali grows over 10% of the nation's food by the way) are utterly dependent on the 80% of the population that consume these.
The blue urban enclaves can get their food and energy elsewhere (and almost 20% of our food is imported). We can, with the right investment, be energy independent.
The red regions cannot survive without the blue dollars flowing in (a net drain on the economy, while cities are the engines of the economy and trade). They are an albatross around the neck of urban America.
Even in CA, the red areas predominantly grow the food and produce the energy.
Saying someone who produces something is *entirely* dependent on someone who consumes puts the almighty dollar above real resources that keep us alive. Not really an argument a progressive person like myself is keen to.
The cities can import all their food from other places? Really? Once again, probably mostly conservative areas in Canada and perhaps Mexico. And I'm not sure progressive 'buy local' city dwellers are going to be keen to ship everything from China to eat. Also, are all those dockworkers and semi drivers also liberals?
How can cities like Chicago or NY be energy independent? A nuclear reactor inside the city? I suppose you could claim Lake Michigan and the Atlantic Ocean as 'part of the city' and build enough wind and solar on those bodies of water, but that's very much stretching what is and is not a part of the city.
Blue dollars- all of the debt free $$ supply comes originally from national Federal spending. So certainly blue cities get their fair share (sometimes less depending on accounting). And they attract $$'s through tourism (fossil fuel heavy), medical needs, education, arts, etc..., but a crap ton also comes through financial pilferage (credit card fees, loan servicing, brokerage fees, etc...). And this latter group of urbanites probably skews right and is extractive of red and blue America alike.
So, the 'blue dollars flowing in'? How do you figure?
Like where I am, Lubbock, TX- a college town. Population of city increases probably 20% during school. Lots and lots of rural kids taking their rural parents $$ and spending it in town to the extractive financial industry and corporate America.
If you then take the argument that these extractive industries are part of 'blue America' and their taxes (way less than they should be) fund statewide initiatives that sometimes help out rural places, OK fine, but that's a very convoluted pathway and not a great argument to try to win over voters IMO.
The reason to vote blue is because blue pols generally give more of a shit about people who don't have a lot. They generally don't make distinctions between red and blue. The IRA sent a lot of $$ to red America because it was done generally in an equitable way. It picked winners and losers based upon metrics that are generally more fair than "Do you promise to vote for me or contribute to my campaign?"
Furthermore, even in the smallest rural counties there is usually 20% to 30% of voters that vote blue. We're on the front lines of fighting misinformation and disinformation. I'm very glad for urban centers where hopefully LGBTQ people can feel safer and progressive policy can be enacted. The blue/red urban/rural divide will continue to grow because of the election and these different value systems, but I don't think it helps to rewrite the story about where real resources are predominantly located. The fascists have a ton of control. Now they once again have the money cannon of the FED govt, and I fully expect them to exploit it towards their own ends.
I lived in US for 30 years, including Trump's first term. Here in Canada we have an election coming up in fall 2025. Our Conservative Party, analogous to Republicans, would easily win at this point. We call them Maple MAGA. The leader of that party is a Trump-lite. So, figuring out WTF happened in 2024 election is urgent for us. Why have we not figured this out in the 8 years since 2016?
Random thoughts:
As JennaFB notes, stew of misinformation--strongly supported by oil and corporate right interests. Lefties are mostly blithely unaware of this stew and completely unable to combat it.
So, we need a big reprogramming effort, which is essentially what climate action is anyway.
1)This pod mentions what are probably two of the biggest levers for that: education and socialization. These often happen together as kids move to urban areas for school and work. Even field trips to places like NYC or other 15 minute cities can have big impacts. Education and training raise incomes, plus we need this for the energy revolution.
2)Income inequality is a thing. Remember Occupy Wallstreet? That has not changed since 2011. Maybe that is part of why the right has weaponized social media to safely corral right wing voters into an alternate universe. Meanwhile, the stock market keeps going up and up...One of the reactions to the election in the US is the formation of a coalition of working class groups that can hopefully make a difference in how the next 4 years rolls out.
3)Remember that Trump voters also probably love dog and cat videos, and that Texas has the most renewables of any state in the US.
My theory is that Trump made a deal with Big Oil to throw their propaganda machinery behind him in exchange for policy rewards upon taking power. He announced that deal early in his candidacy.
I think Big Oil spends dark money on marketing professionals who flood public discussions in platforms like Reddit, X, and local news publishers. I think they dominate discussion and are talented at persuading readers, and their arguments are rarely challenged in those forums-- to do so is tedious work and not fun. The general public refers to those discussions to learn about things, find out what the neighbors think and form their opinions. Just a theory.
Yes, absolutely it is big oil and corporate America. I think it is not necessarily a formal "deal", just what gets done behind the scenes, which the Right takes political advantage of. Why don't progressives have the same social media machine? Traditionally the progressives have universities, libraries, courts of law, non-profits.
Well, oil is the richest industry on Earth, and they pay people to work it. They use framing. If their peeps swarm a discussion with falsehoods and hooey and no one challenges them on it, well then... to an objective observer, it must not be important enough for the scientists and policy experts to show up.
The misinformation parts, like arson causing forest fires and lasers causing hurricanes, the CO2-is-good-for-carbon-based/life-forms and the general muddying of scientific waters with anti-vax hysteria, are what I mean by the unofficial “behind the scenes” work of oil and gas and other bad actors.
The funny thing is most of the money going to red-states for agriculture for instance end up in the pockets of corporations and the billionaires who own them. The average red-state person isn't getting much of this. There's a really good book that describes this reality. "Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry"
I think more is already happening than you are aware of. I'd check out the YIMBY zoning policies passed in Minnesota and Oregon. More importantly I suggest you investigate the results. I live in Portland and Oregon's HB2001 required every city to basically ban single family zoning. I think it's working. As I write, a 8-home cottage cluster is under construction across the street on my residential street. I tell my NIMBY neighbors that complain about parking "Who knows, your future best friend my move into one of these units." Additionally, I'm not sure about Minneapolis, but Portland has 3 major neighborhood redevelopments underway, similar to the Pearl District. Each will be within a few blocks of the river and bring 1,000s of units of housing plus retail and dining.
We have a similar process happening in Canadian cities. I worry that it will backfire because the units are small--500 sq ft for a 1 bedroom--and displacing biodiversity as developers cut trees to get every bit of money out of the property.
Thanks for sharing Suzanne. In my experience the rezoning in Minneapolis and Oregon cities has not had a major effect on forests. The development is taking place within the existing urban fabric. For instance, one major Portland project will be reusing the 12 square blocks that once housed the US Postal service. The City worked with USPS to relocate to a brand new facility at the airport (smart!) and create room for new mixed-use downtown development and new park blocks. The 8 (900 sq ft, 2 br, $450k) cottages going in across the street from me are replacing one 700 sf house that sat on a double lot. Under previous zoning there would have been two homes going up (3,000 sq ft, 4 br, $1m). We can debate whether or not $450k for a 2 br is affordable, but the alternative was only affordable for a very few; typically retiring Californians.
Great conversation. I'm sick of progressives giving a crap about how rural voters perceive them. We ARE more educated than you. We ARE better informed. We DO contribute more to the economy. We subsidize YOUR food stamps. We vote for YOUR well being. We are the people who expanded our sphere of experience past the 100 mile radius of our home town and understand the world with more nuance than you do. So sick of your BS.
For a view counter to that of the market solving the housing crisis -- "government should get out of the way and just let the developers build" -- Richard A. Walker, professor emeritus of geography at UC Berkeley who has written extensively about California, could be consulted, maybe on this program.
He writes in "Pictures of a Gone City", "When it comes to providing enough low-cost housing, however, market solutions are simply inadequate..." "For the bottom quarter of the population, there need to be massive infusions of federal and state funds for construction of low-cost units comparable to the billions that now go into highways and mass transit." He also mentions land trusts to buy land and buildings, and in general removal of land and housing from the market and repurposing to low-income housing (bottom 25% of the population as noted above.)
Yes, the market is what got us into housing affordability/shortage problem in the first place. It isn't a simple supply-and-demand problem. Or rather, supply and demand don't work until you have a lot more housing than exists in many of the desirable areas. In many areas, where manpower and land are scarce, more building paradoxically increases housing prices. Historically (and people forget this), government WAS in the business of building housing. I believe Paris, as a useful model, instituted housing pricing rules that were designed to ensure that people with different incomes could afford to live together.
I caught that stroads were bad but didn’t see a definition (sorry if I overlooked it) so looked it up, sharing for anyone else who might be curious. Great conversation. I am doing what I can do yimbify my town (basically a close suburb of Columbus OH) and this gives me energy.
I feel like the discussion of causes of a rightward swing in cities gives a bit too much credence to actual reasons that make sense and less about the general stew of misinformation that everyone - including city-dwellers - is steeped in.
I don't think it's just NIMBYs and NIMBY capture. I think there's something about local governance that turns every lefty progressive elected official into a right-wing weirdo. Like in Cleveland we have 17 Democrats and 0 Republicans on a City Council that consistently defunds everything else and gives it to cops. We have teenagers sleeping in cars but we spend $200MM on some improvements to the ballpark that we don't even own. And we have some fancy high-sounding policies on urbanist causes like public transportation and accessible sidewalks but *nothing gets done.*
Dan's example of the monorail sounds very similar. What the hell is going on? The people keep voting to fund it and build it. The decision has been made. Why is it not getting done?
I do not get why big blue cities keep *making progressive decisions* and then simply not executing on them.
A big problem with this analysis is that a lot of Hispanics, blacks and men of all races have come to believe that the Democrats are doing a pretty shitty job of governing the Urban Archipelago.
My stock response. If you have seen it before I’m sorry, if not enjoy.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party. We are no longer the patriotic, sensible party of FDR and JFK.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that gay kids should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a futile effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No, you can’t camp in our city. No, you can’t shit in our streets. No, you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bail to commit more crimes.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.
Slight correction: Oregon isn't deep red, it's diagonally split blue/red. The closer you get to Idaho the redder it gets, but the center is split essentially 50/50.
"Fuck it, let's disdain them (the rednecks, hicks, yokels, bumpkins, white trash, hayseeds, rubes - there are many pejorative labels for the rural poor in the lexicon)."
This piece is so disappointing, and wrong, on so many levels. Pulling up the drawbridge and breathing contemptuous disdain on those outside the urban castle/archipelago will just add to the political morass the USA is in, the same morass we are sliding into here in Canada where I live.
The rural areas of the US, and Canada, have been in a decades long economic slide. Industrial and 'financialization' systems suck to the center and starve the margins, a process accelerated by the Dem/Republican neoliberal policies. Trump’s rural voters are poor, rates of poverty in rural areas are 30% higher than in urban areas, and rural residents are worse off in terms of access to education, to health care, job opportunities, unemployment rate, and on and on. They are scared, including being scared about climate change, even the CC change deniers.
You need rural areas on board for the energy transition. That is where the utility pv panels, windfarms, battery storage complexes and geothermal power plants are and will be sited. Nukes too if the nuke crowd ever get their act together. It is an unholy alliance of purist urban greens and the fossil fuel crowd that is blocking grid upgrades, not the rural poor. And the rich, neoliberal, mostly urban Dem nimbys (eg.the Hyannisport set) have blocked many renewable developments.
As Nathan Lewis in an earlier comment pointed out rural areas vote 20-30% blue. Bernie Sanders had a big base of support in rural areas that has moved over to Trump because the Dem establishment flipped them off. If only 1 to 3% of rural voters in the swing states had voted Harris instead of Trump we would be having a different conversation. Gun control should extend to Dems not shooting themselves in the foot.
Wonderful analysis of urban progress paralysis and its unintended results. Go guys. Make Monorails Great Again.
I don't know if David ran into anyone from Utah at the Mtn Towns conference but a similar dynamic has developed around a proposed transportation gondola from the Salt Lake Valley to Alta/Snowbird. After years of study on alleviating the "red snake" of brakelights up Little Cottonwood canyon, the Utah DOT made the unexpected choice of an eight mile gondola gliding along above the remaining car traffic. Both "progressives" and "environmentalists" have risen up to oppose it. It seems many are Gen Y & Z. Another boomer pal of mine lives there and is just flummoxed by this opposition. These "activists" can find every minor ill-side-effect of any "project," but lose track of the main major benefits.
In any case, thoroughly agreed with the critique of Dem's excessive pandering to this rural/exurban clique, at the expense of actually helping their own constituency.
The idea of families living in 2 bed apartments in Seattle like in German cities is not realistic. In Germany they are not paying $2500 for childcare per kid, and they also have lower rents in German cities. I LOVE the way German cities work for families and they have a lovely aesthetic, but they operate in a totally different financial system.
Fun fact: 25 F-bombs were bleeped in this episode, a new Volts record!
😄
GDP- maybe...
But all the food is grown outside of cities, almost all of the energy is produced outside of cities.
Financial centers are located in cities (not necessarily blue, but disproportionate power over everyone).
The places where food is grown and energy is produced (Cali grows over 10% of the nation's food by the way) are utterly dependent on the 80% of the population that consume these.
The blue urban enclaves can get their food and energy elsewhere (and almost 20% of our food is imported). We can, with the right investment, be energy independent.
The red regions cannot survive without the blue dollars flowing in (a net drain on the economy, while cities are the engines of the economy and trade). They are an albatross around the neck of urban America.
Even in CA, the red areas predominantly grow the food and produce the energy.
Saying someone who produces something is *entirely* dependent on someone who consumes puts the almighty dollar above real resources that keep us alive. Not really an argument a progressive person like myself is keen to.
The cities can import all their food from other places? Really? Once again, probably mostly conservative areas in Canada and perhaps Mexico. And I'm not sure progressive 'buy local' city dwellers are going to be keen to ship everything from China to eat. Also, are all those dockworkers and semi drivers also liberals?
How can cities like Chicago or NY be energy independent? A nuclear reactor inside the city? I suppose you could claim Lake Michigan and the Atlantic Ocean as 'part of the city' and build enough wind and solar on those bodies of water, but that's very much stretching what is and is not a part of the city.
Blue dollars- all of the debt free $$ supply comes originally from national Federal spending. So certainly blue cities get their fair share (sometimes less depending on accounting). And they attract $$'s through tourism (fossil fuel heavy), medical needs, education, arts, etc..., but a crap ton also comes through financial pilferage (credit card fees, loan servicing, brokerage fees, etc...). And this latter group of urbanites probably skews right and is extractive of red and blue America alike.
So, the 'blue dollars flowing in'? How do you figure?
Like where I am, Lubbock, TX- a college town. Population of city increases probably 20% during school. Lots and lots of rural kids taking their rural parents $$ and spending it in town to the extractive financial industry and corporate America.
If you then take the argument that these extractive industries are part of 'blue America' and their taxes (way less than they should be) fund statewide initiatives that sometimes help out rural places, OK fine, but that's a very convoluted pathway and not a great argument to try to win over voters IMO.
The reason to vote blue is because blue pols generally give more of a shit about people who don't have a lot. They generally don't make distinctions between red and blue. The IRA sent a lot of $$ to red America because it was done generally in an equitable way. It picked winners and losers based upon metrics that are generally more fair than "Do you promise to vote for me or contribute to my campaign?"
You know, hopefully the opposite of fascism.
Furthermore, even in the smallest rural counties there is usually 20% to 30% of voters that vote blue. We're on the front lines of fighting misinformation and disinformation. I'm very glad for urban centers where hopefully LGBTQ people can feel safer and progressive policy can be enacted. The blue/red urban/rural divide will continue to grow because of the election and these different value systems, but I don't think it helps to rewrite the story about where real resources are predominantly located. The fascists have a ton of control. Now they once again have the money cannon of the FED govt, and I fully expect them to exploit it towards their own ends.
Then allow us to secede.
I lived in US for 30 years, including Trump's first term. Here in Canada we have an election coming up in fall 2025. Our Conservative Party, analogous to Republicans, would easily win at this point. We call them Maple MAGA. The leader of that party is a Trump-lite. So, figuring out WTF happened in 2024 election is urgent for us. Why have we not figured this out in the 8 years since 2016?
Random thoughts:
As JennaFB notes, stew of misinformation--strongly supported by oil and corporate right interests. Lefties are mostly blithely unaware of this stew and completely unable to combat it.
So, we need a big reprogramming effort, which is essentially what climate action is anyway.
1)This pod mentions what are probably two of the biggest levers for that: education and socialization. These often happen together as kids move to urban areas for school and work. Even field trips to places like NYC or other 15 minute cities can have big impacts. Education and training raise incomes, plus we need this for the energy revolution.
2)Income inequality is a thing. Remember Occupy Wallstreet? That has not changed since 2011. Maybe that is part of why the right has weaponized social media to safely corral right wing voters into an alternate universe. Meanwhile, the stock market keeps going up and up...One of the reactions to the election in the US is the formation of a coalition of working class groups that can hopefully make a difference in how the next 4 years rolls out.
3)Remember that Trump voters also probably love dog and cat videos, and that Texas has the most renewables of any state in the US.
Top-down climate action may be gone, but maybe we need it less than we think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXwGvLj4rak
Cheers!
My theory is that Trump made a deal with Big Oil to throw their propaganda machinery behind him in exchange for policy rewards upon taking power. He announced that deal early in his candidacy.
I think Big Oil spends dark money on marketing professionals who flood public discussions in platforms like Reddit, X, and local news publishers. I think they dominate discussion and are talented at persuading readers, and their arguments are rarely challenged in those forums-- to do so is tedious work and not fun. The general public refers to those discussions to learn about things, find out what the neighbors think and form their opinions. Just a theory.
Yes, absolutely it is big oil and corporate America. I think it is not necessarily a formal "deal", just what gets done behind the scenes, which the Right takes political advantage of. Why don't progressives have the same social media machine? Traditionally the progressives have universities, libraries, courts of law, non-profits.
Well, oil is the richest industry on Earth, and they pay people to work it. They use framing. If their peeps swarm a discussion with falsehoods and hooey and no one challenges them on it, well then... to an objective observer, it must not be important enough for the scientists and policy experts to show up.
The deal wasn't done "behind the scenes" but was publicly announced. Check out https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/ and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/09/trump-oil-ceo-donation
The misinformation parts, like arson causing forest fires and lasers causing hurricanes, the CO2-is-good-for-carbon-based/life-forms and the general muddying of scientific waters with anti-vax hysteria, are what I mean by the unofficial “behind the scenes” work of oil and gas and other bad actors.
great TED talk, thanks!
💚hey, Jojo!
The funny thing is most of the money going to red-states for agriculture for instance end up in the pockets of corporations and the billionaires who own them. The average red-state person isn't getting much of this. There's a really good book that describes this reality. "Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry"
I think more is already happening than you are aware of. I'd check out the YIMBY zoning policies passed in Minnesota and Oregon. More importantly I suggest you investigate the results. I live in Portland and Oregon's HB2001 required every city to basically ban single family zoning. I think it's working. As I write, a 8-home cottage cluster is under construction across the street on my residential street. I tell my NIMBY neighbors that complain about parking "Who knows, your future best friend my move into one of these units." Additionally, I'm not sure about Minneapolis, but Portland has 3 major neighborhood redevelopments underway, similar to the Pearl District. Each will be within a few blocks of the river and bring 1,000s of units of housing plus retail and dining.
We have a similar process happening in Canadian cities. I worry that it will backfire because the units are small--500 sq ft for a 1 bedroom--and displacing biodiversity as developers cut trees to get every bit of money out of the property.
Thanks for sharing Suzanne. In my experience the rezoning in Minneapolis and Oregon cities has not had a major effect on forests. The development is taking place within the existing urban fabric. For instance, one major Portland project will be reusing the 12 square blocks that once housed the US Postal service. The City worked with USPS to relocate to a brand new facility at the airport (smart!) and create room for new mixed-use downtown development and new park blocks. The 8 (900 sq ft, 2 br, $450k) cottages going in across the street from me are replacing one 700 sf house that sat on a double lot. Under previous zoning there would have been two homes going up (3,000 sq ft, 4 br, $1m). We can debate whether or not $450k for a 2 br is affordable, but the alternative was only affordable for a very few; typically retiring Californians.
Great conversation. I'm sick of progressives giving a crap about how rural voters perceive them. We ARE more educated than you. We ARE better informed. We DO contribute more to the economy. We subsidize YOUR food stamps. We vote for YOUR well being. We are the people who expanded our sphere of experience past the 100 mile radius of our home town and understand the world with more nuance than you do. So sick of your BS.
For a view counter to that of the market solving the housing crisis -- "government should get out of the way and just let the developers build" -- Richard A. Walker, professor emeritus of geography at UC Berkeley who has written extensively about California, could be consulted, maybe on this program.
He writes in "Pictures of a Gone City", "When it comes to providing enough low-cost housing, however, market solutions are simply inadequate..." "For the bottom quarter of the population, there need to be massive infusions of federal and state funds for construction of low-cost units comparable to the billions that now go into highways and mass transit." He also mentions land trusts to buy land and buildings, and in general removal of land and housing from the market and repurposing to low-income housing (bottom 25% of the population as noted above.)
Yes, the market is what got us into housing affordability/shortage problem in the first place. It isn't a simple supply-and-demand problem. Or rather, supply and demand don't work until you have a lot more housing than exists in many of the desirable areas. In many areas, where manpower and land are scarce, more building paradoxically increases housing prices. Historically (and people forget this), government WAS in the business of building housing. I believe Paris, as a useful model, instituted housing pricing rules that were designed to ensure that people with different incomes could afford to live together.
I caught that stroads were bad but didn’t see a definition (sorry if I overlooked it) so looked it up, sharing for anyone else who might be curious. Great conversation. I am doing what I can do yimbify my town (basically a close suburb of Columbus OH) and this gives me energy.
I feel like the discussion of causes of a rightward swing in cities gives a bit too much credence to actual reasons that make sense and less about the general stew of misinformation that everyone - including city-dwellers - is steeped in.
Gah, link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
I don't think it's just NIMBYs and NIMBY capture. I think there's something about local governance that turns every lefty progressive elected official into a right-wing weirdo. Like in Cleveland we have 17 Democrats and 0 Republicans on a City Council that consistently defunds everything else and gives it to cops. We have teenagers sleeping in cars but we spend $200MM on some improvements to the ballpark that we don't even own. And we have some fancy high-sounding policies on urbanist causes like public transportation and accessible sidewalks but *nothing gets done.*
Dan's example of the monorail sounds very similar. What the hell is going on? The people keep voting to fund it and build it. The decision has been made. Why is it not getting done?
I do not get why big blue cities keep *making progressive decisions* and then simply not executing on them.
A big problem with this analysis is that a lot of Hispanics, blacks and men of all races have come to believe that the Democrats are doing a pretty shitty job of governing the Urban Archipelago.
My stock response. If you have seen it before I’m sorry, if not enjoy.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party. We are no longer the patriotic, sensible party of FDR and JFK.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that gay kids should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a futile effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No, you can’t camp in our city. No, you can’t shit in our streets. No, you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bail to commit more crimes.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.
Slight correction: Oregon isn't deep red, it's diagonally split blue/red. The closer you get to Idaho the redder it gets, but the center is split essentially 50/50.
"Fuck it, let's disdain them (the rednecks, hicks, yokels, bumpkins, white trash, hayseeds, rubes - there are many pejorative labels for the rural poor in the lexicon)."
This piece is so disappointing, and wrong, on so many levels. Pulling up the drawbridge and breathing contemptuous disdain on those outside the urban castle/archipelago will just add to the political morass the USA is in, the same morass we are sliding into here in Canada where I live.
The rural areas of the US, and Canada, have been in a decades long economic slide. Industrial and 'financialization' systems suck to the center and starve the margins, a process accelerated by the Dem/Republican neoliberal policies. Trump’s rural voters are poor, rates of poverty in rural areas are 30% higher than in urban areas, and rural residents are worse off in terms of access to education, to health care, job opportunities, unemployment rate, and on and on. They are scared, including being scared about climate change, even the CC change deniers.
You need rural areas on board for the energy transition. That is where the utility pv panels, windfarms, battery storage complexes and geothermal power plants are and will be sited. Nukes too if the nuke crowd ever get their act together. It is an unholy alliance of purist urban greens and the fossil fuel crowd that is blocking grid upgrades, not the rural poor. And the rich, neoliberal, mostly urban Dem nimbys (eg.the Hyannisport set) have blocked many renewable developments.
As Nathan Lewis in an earlier comment pointed out rural areas vote 20-30% blue. Bernie Sanders had a big base of support in rural areas that has moved over to Trump because the Dem establishment flipped them off. If only 1 to 3% of rural voters in the swing states had voted Harris instead of Trump we would be having a different conversation. Gun control should extend to Dems not shooting themselves in the foot.
Is Seattle’s weekly as good as Portland’s “Mercury “?
Wonderful analysis of urban progress paralysis and its unintended results. Go guys. Make Monorails Great Again.
I don't know if David ran into anyone from Utah at the Mtn Towns conference but a similar dynamic has developed around a proposed transportation gondola from the Salt Lake Valley to Alta/Snowbird. After years of study on alleviating the "red snake" of brakelights up Little Cottonwood canyon, the Utah DOT made the unexpected choice of an eight mile gondola gliding along above the remaining car traffic. Both "progressives" and "environmentalists" have risen up to oppose it. It seems many are Gen Y & Z. Another boomer pal of mine lives there and is just flummoxed by this opposition. These "activists" can find every minor ill-side-effect of any "project," but lose track of the main major benefits.
In any case, thoroughly agreed with the critique of Dem's excessive pandering to this rural/exurban clique, at the expense of actually helping their own constituency.
The idea of families living in 2 bed apartments in Seattle like in German cities is not realistic. In Germany they are not paying $2500 for childcare per kid, and they also have lower rents in German cities. I LOVE the way German cities work for families and they have a lovely aesthetic, but they operate in a totally different financial system.
This might be the German word he was looking for, but not 100% sure:
- "Mietshäuser Syndikat" – Collective ownership and cooperative housing, often with a focus on maintaining affordable, community-driven spaces.
- "Wohnungsbaugenossenschaft" – Housing construction cooperatives that manage or develop properties to provide affordable housing options.
- "Baurecht" – Long-term lease of land to developers in exchange for some benefits, such as a unit in the developed property.
- "Baugenossenschaft" – Similar to "Wohnungsbaugenossenschaft," focusing on cooperative housing management and development.