The presidential election once again made clear that there is a striking and surprising relationship between population density and party vote share. The salience of the American electorate's polarization on density  renewed interest in my 2019 paper, The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash, which explores how the logic of long-term urbanization explains the density divide by spatially segregating the national population along the lines of ethnicity, personality, and education.  A few listeners mentioned that they'd like to hear me talk about the paper on the podcast, and discuss whether there are new insights to be gleaned from Biden's win in the 2020 election, so here it is: an improvised two-hour monologue on the Density Divide.  

Readings

The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash by Will Wilkinson

Audio Version of the Density Divide by Will Wilkinson

Who's Your City by Richard Florida

Jason Rentfrow on Google Scholar

Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide by Jonathan Rodden

The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti

Credits

Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)

Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri

Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith

Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center  (@niskanencenter)

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