She may pass richer people, who she sees buying things in stores and living in penthouses that she cannot afford, but she will also pass people who struggle in ways she cannot imagine – being poorer, homeless, or on drugs. She is likely to encounter people very different from herself as she goes about her everyday life. The second could be termed, “visibility of groups”: proximity correlates with the visibility of groups of people identifiable by a particular characteristic or set of characteristics, along with the ways in which their behaviours, experiences and attitudes, differ from non-members of those groups.įor both of these reasons, living in close proximity to others causes attention to be paid to issues that are of little concern to more dispersed populations and can reasonably be expected to nudge people in a more politically progressive direction.Ĭonsider a typical resident of a large city. The first of these could be termed, “overlap of lives”: proximity correlates with the visibility of choices (and their results) at odds with one’s own, and with the magnitude of the impact of others’ choices on one’s own quality of life. These experiences arise from two broad factors. The answer is in the affirmative inasmuch as many such experiences depend on (or are highly favoured by) proximity to others (population density). To identify any direct effect of population density on political opinions, we can ask the following question.Īre there any politically formative experiences or encounters that are more (or less) likely in areas of low (or high) population density? Population density affects the everyday experiences of the residents of a community and, therefore, the issues to which they pay attention in so doing, it influences political opinions. As the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset nicely put it: “Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”įor example, if you were told about two conversations – one about guns, taxes and crime and the other about gay marriage, animal rights and abortion – you could guess with confidence which took place among progressives and which took place among conservatives – even without knowing anything about the content of either conversation. Our lived experiences, more than anything else, affect the issues that most concern us – simply because we can’t help but attend to our experiences (which is what makes them experiences). Since experiences depend on living environment, and political opinions are based largely on experiences, a causal link between population density and political preference potentially offers the strongest and most intuitive explanation of the observed correlation. Remarkably, however, the mechanism of any direct impact of population density on residents’ political views has been relatively neglected. One of the most well-supported findings is that openness to experience (a personality trait) predicts both progressive political views and a preference for living in closer proximity to others with more nearby amenities. Political scientists have examined the causes of this correlation. For example, even in a small town in Iowa, the central few blocks with a density above the threshold will be reliably Democratic-voting. This rule of thumb operates on all scales. That threshold shifts with the political winds, but progressivism increases with population density. In the USA, while multiple demographic and other factors determine the population density at which majority (D) areas give way to majority (R) areas, most voters in an area with a population density of more than about 900 people per square mile support Democrats, whereas most at a lower density support Republicans. Make the corresponding conversion for a photograph of England at night, and you’ll see that the shires are overwhelmingly Tory and the metropolitan centers are overwhelmingly Labour without having to look up any election results. Across cultures and times, areas of higher population density have been associated with more culturally progressive attitudes.Ĭonsider also that a good estimate of the strength of support for Left-leaning parties throughout a democratic country can be made using only a satellite photograph of the nation at night-– with brighter areas, indicating greater population density, being those that prefer more progressive policies and parties.Ĭoloring the bright areas of a photograph of the United States at night blue and the dark areas red will turn the image into an approximate map of Democratic and Republican support.
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