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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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Urban is a bit underspecified, but some statistics about the urban population:

Arizona 89.3%

Colorado 86.0%

Nevada 94.1%

New Mexico 74.5%

Texas 83.7%

Utah 89.8%

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapping-us-urbanization-by-state/

NM is more urbanized than AK, OK, and WY though.

Is this using a system like the census where they define urban as an arbitrary density cutoff that includes things like small farming towns that are ruby red? That kinda undermines everything people mean when they say urban.

I mean, it's kinda justifiable for the census. Their data presumably have some hand in planning things like plumbing infrastructure, but it's really not helpful for a thread on the culture war where urban tends to imply blue tribe.

At least for Texas the vast majority of the population lives in definitely urban environments in a few major metros(DFW and Houston combined have just over half the state's population, add in San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso there's a supermajority), so I think the data is directionally correct.

How many of those residents would self-identify as "suburban" instead of "urban"?

Because there's a pretty big difference between the political behavior of suburbanites and urbanites.

From what I remember, there was an article from a while back about the majority of Texas identified as suburban. Let me see if I can dig it up.

Edit: Found it. I was thinking of an old 538 article from 2015. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american-cities/ it's ~8 years old at this point, so the percentages could have swung a couple points, but I think the general point still stands.

It's mostly wasteland, so very desolate and unproductive outside cities. So it's urban in that sense, but only a tiny sliver of the geography is actually urban.

It's mostly wasteland, so very desolate and unproductive outside cities.

Or in other words, the state is just Australia in microcosm; political implications and all.

Interesting, because Oz is perhaps surprisingly more woke and lefty despite the "pioneer spirit" which would lean very much the opposite. But, I suppose, now that the vast majority are softies in the cities, it makes sense.

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