Recent examples of the war against cities

I wish to make another brief digression from the book text to comment on a current issue. Paul A. London wrote a column in 2021 about the Republican “war against cities,” which I cited in my last post. He noted that the cultural phenomenon of rural hostility towards diverse, wealth-generating cities has a long history (as does the opposite phenomenon of urban contempt towards rural areas). At the moment, the Republican Party is deliberately using its power to make life harder for urbanites, “especially,” London says, those in Blue regions “that vote for Democrats and have large minority populations.”

London mentioned anti-urban federal tax policy changes as an example of the “war on cities.” He might also have mentioned the effective nullification by conservative judges of the Voting Rights Act and acceptance of vote-suppressing measures that hit more populous counties harder. But these official acts are just meant to make city residents poorer and more voiceless in state legislatures. They wouldn’t go so far as to seek to put urbanites’ lives at risk, as extreme factional polarization encourages, right? Well, I’m afraid that can no longer be counted on.

 

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A comment on the state of the Southwest

Here’s another digression. In today’s Grauniad, there’s an ominous story about the state of water use in a less-discussed part of the Southwest. Take a quick guess: what do you think is the fastest-growing city in the United States?

 

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