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Ari Magnusson's avatar

Yep, a lot of this resonates… especially with the 'trad chads' I know. Many of them, living in the Montreal outer burbs, openly complain about their built environment... yet instinctively oppose anything associated with outgoing mayor Valérie Plante. The urbanist = leftist framing has become so entrenched that it’s impossible to even discuss solutions without it turning conspiratorial. Makes it hard to even find common ground, let alone build on it.

I’ve since moved to Berlin, where I’ve lived for two years, and I don’t think what exists here – 24-hour public transit across the whole city, parents enjoying a drink at a bar terrace with their toddlers in the inner city – can even register in their imagination. It’s a completely different model of urban life, and that’s already comparing to Montreal, Canada’s most urbanist metropolis.

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Chip Clemmer's avatar

As a conservative urbanist myself, I think it's a little bit of both. Look at El Segundo, in Southeast LA. It's attracting a lot of young very evangelical conservative techies, who are marketing their services to the tech defense industry. Then, there is the University Of Austin. I think there is a trickle-slow movement of some conservatives back into the cities, but there has also always been a quiet, behind the scenes, conservative element living in the cities. Not everyone working for the Heritage Foundation lives in Bethesda, and not everyone working for the Manhattan Institute, lives in New Jersey. The reasons why we conservative urbanists like cities, are the same reasons why liberal urbanists like cities: public transportation ( if you live in the city, you really don't need to own a car), the restaurants, the theater, the symphony, the opera, the really cool ethnic street festivals, the professional sports teams, the museums, etc. For me, a wonderful afternoon is spending a few hours in the National Gallery Of Art. Gen Z seems to lean conservative. They also like urban environments. There is hope.

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