What draws U.S. left-leaning folks to cities to begin with?

It’s more that cities tend to make people liberal. Some folks in small towns have never met a Muslim person or a Korean person. They have only a family tradition of racism in their small white racist town. People in cities have to live alongside many different types of people, and get to eat different foods and have different experiences. That cures racism.

Left leaning people tend to be better educated. The majority of the jobs for better educated people are in cities. Cities are more expensive because jobs for better educated people tend to pay more.

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.

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.

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I'm no anthropomologist by any means so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I'd figure its the other way around. People raised in contact with more diverse groups of people (eg. raised in a city) are probably more likely to become left-leaning, where people raised in a more homogenous environment (eg. small towns) are more likely to become more right-leaning

You're confusing cause and effect, mostly.

If you've:

• Met a bunch of people that don't look like you or live like you

• Have a high paying job that requires a good education

• Encountered a ton of new concepts and ideas frequently

You're more likely to be a liberal. These things also tend to occur at much greater frequencies in cities.

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.

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".

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.

You said it yourself: Cities lean left, but a significant minority of urbanites are still conservative. There are more conservative in the city than in the country, in fact, it's just that in rural areas we're in the majority.

Another factor: People who are wary of change are less likely to move away from where they grew up.

Good jobs are in cities. Usually good jobs require a college education. Educated people are more left-leaning.

Speaking as someone that made this transition....

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.

Anyways, that's my two cents.

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.

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.

Cities add efficiency. By pulling together and sharing resources, you can suddenly have nice soccer fields, insider pools for winter, or a national sports team. Also, companies are more efficient doe to a larger pool of labor. It is easier to have rewarding careers when there are many companies to choose from.

People in cities tend to output far more per person than rural areas. That is why states like CA have much higher gdp per person than states with mostly rural people, or even TX that is about average with a big mix of both.

And this leads to higher potential wages for more people. That person living paycheck to paycheck in a high cost of living area is usually building wealth much faster than the same person in a low cost of living area. Just don’t try to live there if you cannot make enough to afford it.

I don't think so much that cities attract left-leaning individuals as much as the people who live there tend to be (or become) left leaning.

In rural communities you tend to get a lot of families who have lived in the area for a long time, and not much movement. So they tend to be more homogenous. Cities tend to attract lots of different people (and more tends to happen), so you're gonna be exposed to a lot more and it will be harder to stay isolated.

Another factor is the white flight that occured after ww2. Lots of cheap housing was put up outside cities, and lots of white families moved out to live in them (in some cases they didn't even let black people buy houses in these developments). So you get a lot of conservative, white people moving out in the suburbs, leaving a lot of minorities who tend to be more liberal.

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.

I'm gay.

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.

All the other answers here cite things like education and wealth, but spend time in politically-tidally-locked places like Rochester and Syracuse and you’ll realize all it boils down to is it being cultural. There are what many would call right-leaning cities, and they aren’t any different race-wise, ethnicity-wise, education-wise, or (most of the time) wealth-wise except that they’re right-leaning. Education/exposure does not magically change your whole philosophy, that’s like saying going to a Catholic school will guarantee your kid will be Catholic.

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Living in a conservative country area I notice racists escaping here, and they seek sympathy with local people. They join churches and bring a lot of money, so the locals tend to rally around them with the intention of encouraging them. Older people also hang around yelling at everything wrong in the world, and younger people have to move to follow opportunities. The young families that come back tend to lean pretty far right.

Then there's farmers and primary producers that need left leaning people to be ostracized, so that they can exploit whatever resources without environmental oversight. They also tend to encourage the far right atmosphere in local towns.

The remaining leftists are a minority that tend to cling to one specific town and the most populated city here. But, they even seem compromised when compared to big city leftists. Some appreciate racism, etc.

What a horribly loaded, asinine question.