2w ago

Where are all the successful "red cities"?

It's become somewhat of a meme now when there is a story on crime, or other bad things happening in a city, people pipe up and say "That's how it is in blue cities!" "This could only happen in a Democrat city!" However, I noticed they never say "... and that's why only want to live in X" or "... that would never happen in Y".

If living in "blue cities" are such a nightmare, where are all these Utopian "red cities" that people are apparently in favor of?

117 comments

the funny thing is... getting people to live closer together encourages empathy.
living in the middle of nowhere reduces empathy... this is why people living in bumfuck are empathy-lacking tools calling themselves 'conservatives'
- It seems like a lot of the time they are like "boy, crime is higher".... but if you live in a city that's just a fact of life. It's pretty obvious that there will be less crime out in the sticks. I wouldn't really attribute this to any "blue" policies.
  
  Part of "less crime in the sticks" is a population effect. The rate of violent crime in New York City is 494/100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in the whole state of Alabama, from its stickiest sticks to the 225,000-resident Huntsville metropolis, is 404/100,000, which isn't that different, in my book.
  
  I wouldn't say there is less crime out in the sticks. But there's less detected crime out in the sticks.
  
  We also see that rural crime is undercounted, underreported. Many studies show that (sometimes) rural areas have more crime. Of course it varies by time and location and depends how you define everything.
  
  It's usually lower per capita. Right wing media likes to report in nominal numbers, because have 10 crimes sounds like a lot more than 2 crimes. But when you see it's 10 out of 1000 (1%) people vs 2 out of 50 (4%) it doesn't look as good.
- I was biking a dirt road near my rural neighborhood and saw a sign at somebody's driveway that said "if you can read this you're within range" and wondered how country folk got the stereotype of being friendly and kind. I really miss living in the city.
  
  propaganda from the movies and shows. probably they need economic businesses to thier area, so they make up an image so people would go there, but NOT LIVE THERE. Yellowstone being one of those shows, and many other shows make reference of "southern hospitality"
- Not saying you're wrong, because I believe I've seen patterns like this (but can also think of quite a fee counter examples). But do you have any evidence for this, or is it just a hypothesis?
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban%E2%80%93rural_political_divide
  the empathy is an inference from a documentary i saw where people have had some success in rural communities changing hearts and minds by befriending them. it turns out its easy to lack empathy for people youve never associated with and you have always been told are less than yourself.
- It's the opposite in Sweden. Countryside leans left and cities lean right.
  
  what're you on about? the most voted party in all 3 big cities is the socdems, rural places are WAY WAY WAY more right leaning than urban areas.
  
  i think there are different socioconomics in play in sweden. lots of real immigration management issues unlike the united states made up ones.
  also, sweden is more than an order of magnitude different in size (< 5% actually) of the unites states. 'rural' sweden isnt the same thing as 'rural' US.
  also, i doubt the swedish rednecks are thirsty to get back to their slaving roots.
- and alot of people that live in the moutains are "cray cray" there was a post/thread on reddit where vairous people accounted men in the woods that were not right in the head, in large numbers.
Staying afloat using tax dollars from blue states
- Welfare queens.
  Those cities and states should have a work requirement and random drug tests.
- Cities make more money than farms. Shocking stuff
- States aren't cities.
  
  the Vatican, crying in the corner*
  
  Yeah, and...? Doesn't invalidate their point. They're still correct.
  
  Red cities are typically found in Red states.
where are all these Utopian "red cities" that people are apparently in favor of?
They do not and can not exist. Conservatism is an antisocial and anti-intellectual, authoritarian ideology. This pretty much rules it out of success in most conventional metrics.
This explains the rural/city divide and why conservatives view blue cities as hell holes:
How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Having lived both sides, the whole thing not only resonates with me, it rings my fucking bell. If there was one article I could force all Americans to read, this is it.
- Unpopular things for Republicans to hear:
  The free market crushed their industries and pressured them over seas
  Mexico is pretty much what republicans and libertarians wish they were. Particularly in the north.
  
  No need to bring libertarians into this.
- Thats a pretty good read. I often think about a lot of that. But I never come up with a way to help the rural population much. Thier way of life is dying, has been for a few hundred years. But it is still essential. They don't like handouts or even assistance. So how do you help them?
  
  I'd start by taking to top off Fox News and see them dance the hemp fandango. I cannot overstate how they've poisoned America. Had some education in journalism so I'm better tooled than most to spot media manipulation. Sure they come out with in-your-face lies now and again, but they're mostly subtle, which is far more evil. Next, I'd go after our social media overlords. These snakes have to be decapitated, literally.
  Lately I've thought that the best way to heal America's rural/urban divide is to point out that the rich are fucking us. It's not the farmer or the blue-haired girl, not the LGBT folks or gun nuts, certainly not the immigrants. If I could hammer a single message into the American zeitgeist it would be this, "The wealthy are hurting all of us. Fight them every step of the way."
  I know Bane's the bad guy and straight psychotic, but his speech in The Dark Knight Rises makes we want to fucking cheer.
  We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please. Start by storming Blackgate, and freeing the oppressed! Step forward those who would serve. For and army will be raised. The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure. Courts will be convened. Spoils will be enjoyed. Blood will be shed. The police will survive, as they learn to serve true justice. This great city... it will endure. Gotham will survive!
  There is no hope until the rich live in fear of the masses.
- Nation founded by genocidal enslavers never had a mind to lose.
From what I've noticed, cities tend to be more liberal than rural areas. I can't think of a major city off the top of my head that is a republican stronghold. I've got to go to work but I found these two links which may help.
https://townsoftheusa.com/most-conservative-cities-in-usa/
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-most-conservative-major-cities-in-the-united-states-883419/
- Miami, maybe. But I think they're still pretty left in comparison to the Rest of Florida
  
  Miami has its share of violent crime, doesn't it?
- The first one in the first link is Provo, Utah which is the fourth largest city in Utah.
  
  And Utah is the thirtieth most populous state.
- That second website is horrible on a phone.
  From what I’ve found, if we’re going by population, then Jacksonville, Florida seems to be the largest red city.
They are blue because studies have shown that proximity to others makes you more compassionate.
I think San Antonio is about as red as it gets for a city its size
Salt Lake City obviously but that's a different story
- And to be clear, San Antonio may be more red leaning, but is not red still.
- Houston is as well considering it's massive but full of mostly sprawled suburbs and tons of oil people or friends/relatives of oil people.
  
  Houston suburbs would not be red if they weren't gerrymandered to fuck
Well there's Dayton Ohio which is a successful red city if you look at how they vote and literally nothing else. Jesus fuck their crime rate says magnificent things about the democrats
- With the new gerrymandering 2.0 Ohio is proposing, soon all of their cities will be "red" (on paper)
  
  Why even propose it? It's illegal. They know its illegal. We know it's illegal. The courts know its illegal, and the courts won't stop it
  
  Wish there was a requirement that all districts be rectangular or triangular. That would make gerrymandering more difficult to arrange.
- This one?
  
  That’s Texas…?
- Pretty sure Dayton started very blue
  
  Yeah i grew up in the area. It changed alongside ohio
A small town, or a suburb of a city that is described as "a great place to raise a family". From what I have seen, that usually means one of two things:
The town/suburb is closer to the city, but is wealthy, real estate is expensive, usually very car-centric, which excludes anyone poor (or even middle class, sometimes).
The town/village is far away from the nearest city, not necessarily wealthy, but usually ran by a group of people that know each other (good old boys club), probably heavy on religion or other "traditional" values.
- universal to all places that claim to be "a great place to raise a family" is that they are quite possibly the worst place to raise children, short of the middle of an active warzone or Fuckass wyoming with 4 hours' drive to the nearest human being
Cities are not conducive for fascism, so fash in the USA mostly live outside of cities. They're hoarding their stolen land and screaming into a rural echo chamber. That's the only way they can maintain their delusions.
Miami and Saint David, UT come to mind. Outside the US though, lots of the Balkan major cities are much less liberal than western cities.
- Balkan? The countries that were drawn into a brutal civil war by right wing pieces of shit and are still trying to recover from the bloodshed and brain drain? Those Balkan cities?
  
  No need to be racist
- Miami is purple at least. The old guard Cubans are Republicans, the last governor race not so representative. St. George in Utah is really nice, though maybe a town more than a city.
  Tampa is nice but all of our potentially fixable problems are from the conservative outlying areas, as so much of the government is county not city. it would be much nicer with more money going to transit in particular.
  
  I spent 3 weeks in Thonotosassa in 2015, and Jesus Christ was downtown Tampa sad. It just was devoid of any culture or any reason to be down there. The Columbia Restaurant and Ybor City walk was fire though and made up for it a little bit; it just wasn’t enough to make up for the rest of the city being dreary.
- Miami only recently turned right wing.
  
  Miami was never liberal. It was always a sort of libertarian with certain key issues like anti communism, pro masculinity, pro protectionism, pro small government. We saw them swing right in 2024, but if those were major issues in past elections, we would’ve seen a red Miami sooner. Miami is full of people that have an attitude problem imho.
- How do the violent crime rates compare?
  
  Miami is Miami, St David is probably one of the safest cities in the country. It’s the Mormon college town home to Brigham university.
Did anyone else thought about cities with communist mayor when reading about red cities?
- Yes the whole red<->blue political spectrum swap in the US is confusing sometimes for us non-US.
  
  Makes sense with horseshoe theory. Red for authoritarians no matter left or right. Red is a warning.
Springfield, Missouri, apparently.
Successful red cities? You can have either, but not both.
Right here. Scroll down for the list of cities most people are moving to. They're all red. (Or, charitably, blueish spots surrounded by red.)
People must be moving there for some kind of reason. There's jobs. They're safe. They have stuff to do. Some kind of reason.
- Myrtle Beach is on that list. People are moving there for the meth and racism.
  Forgot to add, these cities are hot moving target cause housing is cheap. They are popular with the wealthy leaving cities and moving to lower CoL areas. It’s not cause they are safe or have jobs. They are affordable compared to bigger cities.
  
  Hmm. That's an interesting theory.
- blueish spots surrounded by red.
  That's the point tho. Fash don't live in cities. It disturbs their wacky ideology with humans and reality. Fash stay out in the burbs or farther with their privilege and delusions.
  
  But still, the cities on the list are all cities in red states. That's weird.
- I clicked through and had to go to a second linked article(!) for the top 5. The #1 is "Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas", which is pretty much a blue city now.
  This doesn't really support your claim that "they are all red". Also, we call a "blueish spot surrounded by red" a blue city.
  From what I am learning about in this thread is there isn't really the idea of a "red city", so when people talk shit about "blue cities" they are just talking about city life in general. There does not appear to be any very large cities filled with Republicans.
  
  I guess. I still think there's a difference between DFW and, say, the Twin Cities. You won't catch me living in Texas.
- There's jobs. They're safe. They have stuff to do. Some kind of reason.
  Nah, it's just more affordable than most of the major cities up north. As someone who's lived in Dallas/Fort Worth, it's definitely not the safest place I've lived. It's ranked moderate/high in violent crimes on a national scale.
  As far as Texas goes, San Antonio and Austin have a lot more to do than Dallas and especially Fort Worth. I wouldn't really even say there's a really competitive job market outside of oil and grass. Most of the people who recently moved to the area did so after work from home became normalized.
  It's really just because it's a larger city that people can still afford to purchase a home in, and that's about it.

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