After years of revival and resurgence, the nation’s largest metropolitan areas are now being squeezed by external threats and an internal eruption along their deepest fault line—one that could fracture their political influence in the years to come. America’s cities have already faced almost four years of persistent hostility from […] Read more »
The Coronavirus Is Deadliest Where Democrats Live
The staggering American death toll from the coronavirus, now approaching 100,000, has touched every part of the country, but the losses have been especially acute along its coasts, in its major cities, across the industrial Midwest, and in New York City. The devastation, in other words, has been disproportionately felt […] Read more »
The new geography of America, post-coronavirus
For a generation, a procession of pundits, public relations aces and speculators have promoted the notion that our future lay in dense — and politically deep-blue — urban centers, largely on the coasts. … The new America emerging from this crisis clearly will not be dominated by woke, super-dense cities […] Read more »
Americans differ on views of COVID-19 impact
Americans perceive wide disparities along class, racial, and geographic lines in terms of whose health they think will be most affected by the coronavirus: the working class, more so than the wealthy; cities and suburbs, more than rural areas; African-American and Hispanic communities, more so than white communities; and more […] Read more »
The Urban-Rural Gulf in American Political Behavior
… Places commonly differ in terms of the composition of the people who reside there. No one is arguing about that fact. The question is whether composition is all there is, or whether place has an independent effect. Are two people, identical in their demographic profiles, likely to vary in […] Read more »
An Unprecedented Divide Between Red and Blue America
The coronavirus pandemic appears destined to widen the political divide between the nation’s big cities and the smaller places beyond them. And that could narrow Donald Trump’s possible pathways to reelection. In almost every state, the outbreak is spreading much more heavily in the largest metropolitan centers than in less […] Read more »