The harshest American divide – UnHerd

Largely ignored by the city-dominated media, the world s urban core has been losing this battle for generations. This is not only evident in the United States, but also across Europe and Australia. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, little more than 5% of growth from 1966 to 2021 was in the core cities. In Europe, barely 37% of people live in cities, with the rest in fast-growing suburbs, small towns and rural areas.

Of course, many cities have experienced some revival over the past decade, but that boom has largely benefited educated newcomers and their wealthy employers. Urban regions became both richer and poorer; according to Pew research, the greatest inequality in America now exists in superstar cities , such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and San Jose.

These shifts have, unsurprisingly, shaped urban politics. As middle-class families have left, the urban terroir has been gutted of the old urban bulwark of solid middle and working-class families; as Fred Siegel has observed, it is dominated by an upstairs/downstairs coalition of the affluent and dependent.

via unherd.com

Joel Kotkin.