Yes, We Need Conservatives In Our Cities In Order To Save Them
Liberal governance has been a disaster for the institutions that create and refine our culture
I would have to say, I only know a handful of conservatives who live in the city. Most conservatives I know, either live in the suburbs, small towns, or in rural areas, where their upper-middle class lifestyle means a 2,400 square foot single family home, on 2 acres of land; for some reason, every other house and lot on the street are the same. You also get to drive everywhere. They hate the idea of density, even though they are living in 2-acre, car-dependent density. You don’t get more dense than sitting in a bumper to bumper traffic jam, on your way to and from work.
Then you have the other conservatives, with their 900-1200 square foot single family home in their “ticky-tacky” neighborhood; their neighborhood is a lot more diverse, than the neighborhood with the 2,400 square foot “ticky tacky.” You get to drive everywhere too. Everything you need and everything you want, are not within walking distance either. Welcome to car-dependent suburban density. Of course, for both, there is Amazon.
It’s doubtful that these folks could be convinced to move into the city. It’s a nice place to visit, but…Urban culture, suburban culture, and rural culture are completely different animals. Most of the folks I know that live in the country, would never consider the compromise of living in the suburbs either. As one friend said, “I don’t want to live in a shitty neighborhood.” He lives in the 2,400 square foot on 2 acres density. Like many of us, my friend grew up in the “shitty neighborhood,” half acre suburbs, in one of those post-war “shitty neighborhood” housing developments. After college, a lot of them wanted more space than they had growing up in the inner and middle-ring, “shitty neighborhood,” suburbs. They chose the exurban or rural lifestyle, and commuted every day to the office in the city. I thought they were nuts! Not only do you get to sit in a traffic jam for an hour, you get to pay for parking too.
Aaron Renn has a great Substack page.
It’s worth the subscription price. There is a lot of truth in the following article:
…conservative elites, including aspiring elites, actually prefer a progressive socio-cultural milieu. They don’t want to live around your average Republican voter. They don’t want to live in a very red voting community. They want to live in or near a nice walkable urban center, with lots of shopping, dining, arts and cultural opportunities, intellectual stimulation, and opportunities for new experiences. That’s a progressive cultural environment.
I’m not an elite. I’m not an aspiring elite either. I’m politically conservative, and I love the culture of the city, or as Renn said, “a progressive socio-cultural milieu.” The Left controls the arts, which means it controls urban culture. The basic truce right now is this: We conservative urbanists tolerate liberal urbanists, who tolerate us conservative urbanists. In exchange, we get to enjoy the street festivals together.
Now if we could just get crime under control, make the urban schools the benchmark for quality public education, and build housing that the working and middle classes can afford…