What Does Conservative Urbanism Mean?
That depends, but the answer determines if it has a future.
Yesterday, I attended an event on “conservative urbanism” hosted by R Street Institute and The American Conservative. It was an interesting discussion with lots of worthwhile comments, and I appreciated all the panelists’ comments. I’m friendly to the conservative urbanist movement and wish them well, even as I’m ambivalent about whether I could ever call myself an “urbanist” given that cities are cesspools that should be set to the torch ASAP. But at the event, an attendee asked if conservative urbanism was even possible, given that cities are more left-leaning in the U.S. I think this is the most important question facing the nascent conservative urbanism movement, and, tangentially, important for YIMBY folks, as it determines whether conservatives will ever form a truly meaingful piece of YIMBY coalitions. The question of whether urban-ness is fundamentally hostile to the conservative movement and conservative identity will need a compelling answer if conservative urbanism is ever to get traction.
Within this question is a whole world of debate about what it means to be conservative. What is meant by the terms for ideological placement we use? Are liberal and progressive equivalent? How does that relate to leftism? To conservatism? To traditionalism? To the Republican Party? How do we place ourselves in an international framework, or compared to political movements of 100 or 200 years ago?
If you define conservatism as the broad set of ideologies aimed at preserving Jeffersonian agrarianism and Southern cultural norms in the U.S., then a “conservative urbanism” is indeed impossible, because it is the urb itself which is opposed. To the extent conservatism is the term that Southern reactionaries and American ruralists use to describe whatever they believe in the moment, conservatism cannot be urban: and that’s a real part of the American social and historical movement of conservatism, or at least conservativism. I see these two words as related but slightly different: conservatism is properly an ism, a set of beliefs or ideas which should be fairly stable and consistent. Conservativism, meanwhile, is that set of beliefs or ideas held by those people society identifies as conservative. At certain times, these two categories may overlap more or less.
But right now, they have some bright line distinctions. Conservatism, for example, tends to favor social, normative, or constitutional limitations on the authority of the state to regulate commerce. Conservativism favors such limitations…unless the free market threatens to disrupt the American farmer or masculine industry; when that happens, it’s time for protectionism. Conservatism tends to favor the promotion of essentially Christian moral and family life, touching on issues as diverse as abortion, divorce, employment, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. Conservativism tends to favor the defense of however moral and family life occurred 10–20 years ago, Christian or otherwise. Conservativism is always just a bit behind where society is; conservatism is rarely ever in step with any period of society.
Conservatism and conservativism are both important strains of belief existing within and among “conservatives.” Most of us have various degrees of both. The two ways of viewing conservatives have overlap, so it’s not like these are diametrically opposed forces.
But they have very different consequences for considering the possibility of a conservative urbanism. Functional urban areas have a high degree of impermanence; they are built and re-built and, although preservation exists as well, the appeal of cities is their dynamism. They mutate and change with each no iteration of society, economy, and technology, adopting newly efficient forms and functions. For conservatism, this is no problem: conservatism is concerned with principles. Some epochs of urbanism may be friendlier to conservatism than others as different attitudes about the state, the economy, and the family become more or less socially useful, but fundamentally the urban form is no enemy to Christian moral values and limited government. Christianity was born as an urban religion in Rome and was slow to conquer the souls of the pagan countryside, and the rise of Christianity in America was contemporaneous with increasing urbanization, as urban density made evangelization and church organization easier.
But for conservativism, the story is quite different. Conservativism is defined in a more historically contingent way as a consistent validation of whatever it is that conservatives do and believe. Because conservatives are less urban in the United States and defined by a kind of pseudo-rurality, conservativism today must be anti-urban. There cannot be a pro-urban conservativism because conservatives are mostly rural and thus a pro-urban conservativism would be anti-conservative, and thus no longer truly conservativism. Conservativism cannot accuse conservatives; only conservatism can do that.
I know this is hair-splitting, but bear with me, it matters.
Are Cities Leftist Everywhere?
Let’s look at some political maps.
These are maps of the Germany elections in 2013. Red indicates a social democratic party, blue or gray represent a more conservative party. Purple and green are even further left. The areas along the bottom are the major city-regions of Germany. As you can see, of the major city-regions, some (Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover) were reliably leftist. Some (Munich, Nuremburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Dresen, Leipzing) were more reliably rightist. And, like Berlin or the Rhine-Rhur region, were more divided.
Overall, there was probably a leftist bent in urban areas… but nothing even close to in the US. The GOP won something like 34% of the vote in the 100 most populous counties in the US, which includes several counties that include large rural/suburban populations, not just urban areas. One of the only big-city counties Republicans won was Tarrant County, TX, with Fort Worth, and it was close. You can see the detailed precinct-level results in the US here.
What about other countries? Let’s look at France!
This shows the 1st-round results in the 2017 French presidential election. Dark blue is far-right Marine le Pen, light blue is center-right Francois Fillon, yellow is center-left Emmanuel Macron, red is leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon. Along the left are France’s overseas regions, along the right are zoom-ins of the major cities.
First of all, notice that the non-city areas are divided, with many going for right-wing candidates, but many others going left. The dividing lines are not urban-rural, but regional-historical. Within Paris’ core, we see rightist neighborhoods, center left, and far left. Within the inner suburbs, we see pretty strong leftism. In the outer suburbs, we see diversification again. Cities like Marseilles, Nice, and Lille gave substantial rightist votes, while Lyon, Toulouse, and Bordeaux were more leftist.
Again, it seems plausible that the cities voted to the left of the country… but it’s not extreme in any sense. French rightism, like German rightism, is clearly compatible with cities.
What if we go to the Nordics?
At left is the winner-margin by broad political alignment in Sweden’s 2014 elections.
Red means more leftist parties, blue means more rightist. Notice that the blue regions are all clustered around Stockholm and some of the southern and western city-areas. Evidently, Swedish rightism is perfectly compatible with urban areas; indeed the more rural you get in Sweden, the more leftist you get, and vice versa.
Of course, Swedish rightism and leftism are very different from US rightism and leftism. The “Moderate” party in Sweden supports stuff like, you know, universal mandatory military service and tight immigration restrictions. Just very wishy-washy stuff like that. The rightist party refers to LGBTQ advocates as the “Homosex Lobby.” But ya know, Sweden’s right-wing totally is just super liberal actually, or whatever.
And of course, we can look to English-speaking countries too. Here’s Australia:
Again, the cutout areas are big cities. Blue and dark green represent more rightist parties, bright red represents the more leftist Labor Party. Rural voters do seem decidedly more rightist than urban voters, with blue and dark green dominating the national map. But within cities, from Brisbane to Sudney to Melbourne to Perth, it turns out that rightist voters continue to rack up a pretty good score. Now, again, yes, cities are probably more leftist, but it’s not that extreme.
I’ve got maps of Ireland here but they’re hard to show in a good way on this blog post, but suffice to say that Ireland’s cities are, again, probably a bit to the left of the countryside, but it’s nothing like what we observe in the US.
We can also look, of course, to the UK. Here’s the most recent UK election results:
Again, the cutouts represent more urbanized areas. And here, we see some of the strongest associations between urbanity and leftism. London, Manchester, the Midlands, NE England, they’re all more leftist than the more rightist rural parts of the UK. Out in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland we get local political movements screwing up our nice blue-green maps, but even there the basic trends seem to continue.
In Greater London, the British conservatives got 33% of the vote in what proved to be a pretty bad election for them. In the New York Metro Area in 2016, Republicans got about the same vote percentage. Within New York City proper, they got about 22%. So in the UK, the urban-leftism bias may be pretty comparable to in the US.
Finally, we can look at Canada.
First of all, I award Canada the most hilariously nonsensical political map award. Blue means rightist here, red, orange, and green are more leftist, and teal is a regionalist party. The cutouts along the bottom, as usual, generally indicate more urban areas. Here you can see that some urban areas were very leftist: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, Winnipeg, Vancouver. Others were more rightist: Quebec, Calgary, Edmonton, etc. Broadly speaking, urban areas seem to have a notable leftward tillt… but if you look at the map on the whole, the densely-populated regions of southern Ontario and Quebec are quite rightist, as are the oil-regions of western Canada… but then densely populated Atlantic Canada is very leftist, as is rural upper Ontario and the extremely thinly populated far north… in other words, while there’s a fairly telling urban-leftism bias, there’s not that much of a rural-rightism bias, and many dense areas turn out to be quite rightist in Canada.
We can also look at developing countries. Take India, for example. Here’s a map of their 2014 election:
Orange indicates the rightist party, blueish colors represent more leftist parties. Rightists swept much of the country of course, but were particularly dependent on urban voters in the west and north, although sectional factors show up much more prominently here.
Or take Poland. Blue represents more a more rightist party.
More leftist (or, rather, more pro-European) parties did do better in urban areas, but, again, the bias is small compared to the US. Rightists still managed to get 40% or better in almost every urban constituency in Poland.
In countries with major sectional divides like Spain and Italy, rightist parties also tend to do reasonably well in urban areas. In Turkey, of course, rightist parties thrive in the rural hinterland while more leftist parties are strong in the cities, but in Brazil, leftist parties seem to do better in much of the rural hinterland.
The point of all these maps is to show that although there is some urban-leftism bias, it is far from uniform, and in some countries urban areas are actually a crucial base for more right-leaning groups, such as in Sweden or India.
I am not sure what makes the difference here, but I suspect that much of the urban-rural political divide actually has nothing to do with urban-ness or rurality. Why do urban places in the United States vote reliably Democratic? Is it because tall buildings make you crave more benefits? Maybe to some extent, but c’mon. We know why there are precincts with 100% Democratic votes. It’s about race politics. And, unsurprisingly, rural areas with overwhelmingly black populations also vote overwhelmingly Democratic; same for Hispanic rural areas. American racial sorting has created an urban-rural divide that is really a race-and-nativity divide. Now, it’s true, urban whites are more leftist than rural whites, but the gap is vastly smaller than the overall urban-rural gap, and may itself be a product of social conditioning; i.e. people tend to adopt the views of people around them. That is, the flight of many whites from cities left the remaining population far more left-leaning, which means any moderates remaining are pulled left too.
In other countries, other dynamics are at work. For example, Paris’ suburbs are very left-leaning in no small part due to the large immigrant populations there, whereas the core of the city is less immigrant-dominated. It’s not about urban-ness per se, but about the historic contingency of political coalitions.
Now, sometimes urban-ness does matter. Urban areas often favor more market-based economies, especially in developing countries. But urban areas also often favor more modernized states, which happens to mean a welfare state. This tension creates weirdness in a lot of developing countries where urban areas simultaneously support market-based capitalism, but also support parties promoting social welfare. That is, the globalized city in a developing country has a natural gravity towards what could be called neoliberal parties.
Neoliberalism in the US (or, if you give the exact same ideology a cowboy hat and a slightly more pessimistic view of international relations, neoconservativism) exists across both parties, and is most purely represented among libertarians. But the point is that neoliberalism has a very natural base in urban areas right now. To the extent that a conservative movement is aligned with neoliberalism/neoconservatism (meaning here an internationalized view of national purpose and identity, support for the market economy, and openness to generous government social relief provided it is technocratically operated and structured), there’s no reason it couldn’t get a bigger share of the urban vote. That happens in many countries. The neoliberal right in Sweden is almost entirely urban-based!
But to the extent that a conservative movement is aligned against the market economy, against a technocratic and modernized welfare state, and against internationalized national self-ID, it dies in the city. So if what you want is neo-agrarianism, a night-watchman state with little or no social relief, and you want to be able to casually ignore the world beyond our borders, your ideology dies in the postmodern city. It cannot take root in that swamp. But if what you want is the traditional extended family as the basis for community; an efficient, constitutionally limited government; and if you’re willing to be globally engaged (whether unilaterally or otherwise), then you’ll be able to crack the 33% mark in urban areas. You won’t get 75%. But you might get 45%, which if you’re still banking big rural margins, means you’re a super-powerful political majority.
What Do Conservatives Want?
This brings us back to conservatism vs. conservativism. A conservative urbanist is an oxymoron if “conservative” means just protecting the cultural identity of the Greater American South alongside aspirational pseudo-Jeffersonianism. If being a conservative means that every edifice of the modern state with an origin after 1929 must be ripped down, then you cannot have a conservative urbanism. Cities cannot exist without the social infrastructure of a modern welfare state. Even free-market paradises like Singapore, Switzerland, or Hong Kong know that. If being a conservative means white ethnopolitics and eternal struggle to defend whatever Southernness means in the present age, then you cannot have a conservative urbanism, because cities are dynamic places that elicit rapid social transformation. If being a conservative means walling ourselves off from the wider world, sticking our fingers in our ears, and pretending like nothing beyond America exists, then a conservative urbanism cannot exist, because modern cities are hubs in a global network upon which they absolutely and unalterably depend for their life and vitality.
But if being conservative means promoting Christian morality, then conservative urbanism is easy. Indeed, the close proximity of urban living arguably makes it easier to form intentional Christian communities that can effectively promote a Christian moral vision, self-police individual behavior, and create social capital to lobby the State to ensure the viability of that way of life. Urban areas likely make church life easier to sustain and perpetuate amidst growing secularism, not harder.
If being conservative means arguing for limitations on government power, then the up-close-and-personal life of the city poses no serious barrier. Even as cities demand a degree of government action, they also impose real strictures on governments: nothing the state does in a city is hidden or private. There are no easy policy implementations in a bustling, diverse city. Even one-party politics in a city are cut-throat and competitive in a way rural or suburban politics are not. The complexity of a modern city creates demands on governments, but also serves, for the watchful observer, as a natural antidote to central planning. You cannot seriously observe a modern city and come away thinking that a handful of bureaucrats can manage and organize its economy from an office building. The attempt of liberal cities to do so has damaged their prospects, while more moderate or conservative cities are thriving. Conservatives can save cities by showing up in force and pressing their governments to accept the limitations with natural law and nature’s God impose on the ability of planners to control emergent order.
If being conservative means pressing for the modern welfare state to be as efficient, streamlined, and non-invasive as possible, then urban life is no problem at all; you can argue for less damaging government policies in a fact-based way from a farmhouse front porch or from a 50-story high-rise. If being conservative means engaging with the wider world to promote America’s distinctive greatness, encourage democratization, safeguard liberty, and serve as the responsible guardian of the international order our heroic ancestors shed so much blood to create, then urban life is no threat to us. Nobody benefits from American international engagement more than globalized cities, even if those same places are uniquely sensitive to times where American foreign policy makes mistakes.
Conclusion
The question facing conservative urbanism, then, is what conservatives actually believe. Is the first-order commitment to a set of principles or to a tribal identity? I have always believed it to be about principles, but I will admit to a growing degree of skepticism on that front. Even as I am personally not the biggest fan of urban living, I do want conservatives to compete in urban areas, and for urban areas to enjoy the benefits of conservative ideas… but I worry that we will have to come up with a new word for this thing I’ve been calling conservatism, because I am not sure it has any philosophical content at present. Perhaps conservative urbanism will catch on and I’ll be proven wrong; I could wish for nothing more.
For politicos reading, I will note that GOP weakness in cities is fairly new. Even in 2012, the GOP got about 38% of the vote in America’s 100 biggest counties. Of the 50 biggest cities in the US, just 14 have GOP mayors today, a marked decline from even as recently as 2000. A conservative urbanism doesn’t need to even win majorities of the urban vote to be politically successful and give conservatives important arenas in which to implement their policies. It just needs to do better than the horrible performance we’ve seen in recent years.
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I’m a native of Wilmore, Kentucky, a graduate of Transylvania University, and also the George Washington University’s Elliott School. My real job is as an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, where I analyze and forecast cotton market conditions. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research.
