Why liberals like walkability more than conservatives

http://grist.org/cities/why-liberals-like-walkability-more-than-conservatives/

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All of the people in this picture are Democrats.

The wonkosphere is going wild over the Pew Research Center’s new report on increasing partisan polarization. It shows that liberal and conservative Americans are more segregated than ever: liberals are now all Democrats, conservatives are all Republicans, and both groups — although conservatives much more than liberals — increasingly tend to socialize and get their news only from one another. Conservatives are also found to be totally hostile to political compromise.

To anyone following political news, these findings mostly just reinforce what we already knew. One of the starkest divisions stands out, though, because it is on a topic that is seldom measured or discussed: ideological divisions over walkable urbanism versus suburban sprawl.

Pew asked whether respondents would rather live in an area where “the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,” versus one where “the houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance.” The country is evenly split, with 49 percent choosing the former and 48 percent the latter. But the political divide is dramatic: 75 percent of “consistently conservative” respondents prefer the suburban sprawl model, and only 22 percent prefer the walkable urban design. Among “consistently liberal” Americans, the numbers are reversed.

While voting patterns have long showed a correlation between liberalism and density, the relationship between urban planning preferences and political ideology was not necessarily so obvious. Maybe city dwellers were liberal for the same reasons they did not live in the suburbs — because they are more often poor, non-white, and victims of discrimination — but that doesn’t mean they harbor an affection for density. Likewise, rural voters could just be conservative because they were more likely to work in natural resource extraction and own guns, not because they like having to drive everywhere.