Ironically, the War on Terror is all about protecting the dwellers of the archipielago from mass murder. Osama's Red State threats nothwistanding, the Human Zoos we call urban centers are our most glaring vulnerability to global terrorism.

Yet, we are the ones who fight to protect them; they are the ones who bitch. Anyone for an urban tax as a user tax to pay for the WOT?

Who protected NYC on Sept. 11th?

Memo: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Yeah, yeah, whatever -- who wants coffee?

(It's great that small town middle America feels "safe." That's easy when they're not targets...oh, there I go being a stickler for details! Goodbye.)

Sept. 11th happened on whose watch? Oh, THAT's right: Bush's!

The notion of a national party being based in the cities is hilarious.

Almost every city in the US either shrunk or grew by far less than the national average in each of the last 4 decades. So, the numbskull who wrote this article wants to increase their urban turnout and ignore the rest of the country completely. In business, this is known as 'increasing your share of a declining market' and as anyone with even a rudimentary conception of marketing knows, this is a loser's game.

Moreover, the notion that urban trendnoids are the wave of the future in the cities is beyond comical. Virtually all the population growth in cities occurs among minority groups, many of whom have strong religious ties. San Francisco already is the site of a nasty verbal war between Blacks and gays. A gay real estate developer I know out there told me that the city should simply board up the housing projects and force the Blacks out, perhaps to Oakland. For every gay or apostate hick from the sticks who reads two copies of The New Yorker then imagines himself a sophisticate of the highest order who comes to a major American city, there are 100 Hispanic working class people trying to make a better life for themselves and their children.

OJ, was this article for real or was it some kind of satire?

Bart:

They think of cities the way you think of Japan.

Bart - no, that's The Stranger alright. Welcome to Seattle, dude. See also Dan Savage's little invective on the subject. Even given Eastern Washington's comparative conservatism, I'm still surprised that Rossi won (last time I checked).

Mike, well it certainly is strange.

OJ, if you look for votes, the first requirement is voters. Unless you are willing to play Hudson County style shenanigans, each of us gets only one vote. American cities have a decreasing number of the nation's voters.

If you are merely looking to expand the economy, you can increase per person efficiency without increasing the number of workers. There are plenty of high-growth economies where this has been the case.(Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Israel, Slovenia, Ireland) The comparison is inapposite.

No people, no power.

The superstar team of Wooldridge and Micklethwait have an article coming out shortly in The Economist showing that Kerry only won the stagnant or declining cities, while Bush won fast-growing cities like Dallas and Phoenix. In fact, they say, growth rates correlate better with Rep-Dem vote margin than population density does.

pj, precisely. Why can't your brother be more like you?

OJ, power is dependent on technology and money which is why nobody screws around with Singapore and only the religiously-deranged mess with Israel. Japan has had virtually a zero-growth population since WWII and they have grown exponentially as an economic power. A nation like Argentina which has seen its population nearly triple in the same period has gone from being a competitor of the US to being a Third World outhouse.

The newer economic powers may not be able to put 'boots on the ground' like the imperialist powers of the 19th century, but they can certainly exercise military force as needed. The high-tech advantages of a Japan in a war setting should certainly chill any potential adversary.

It's a strange country that the writers for The Stranger live in where "the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites" make up a governing majority. I'm not sure what country it is, but it sure ain't America.

It's not even the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Cloud-Cuckoo-Land perhaps?

Seattle reelected McDermott with only 79% of the vote. Keep that in mind when you read stuff like this.

One thing the writer doesn't mention is that cities love to dump their problems on someone else.Use to be the solution to air pollution was to build taller chimneys, and that urban mindset hasn't changed. For example, except for Staten Island, is there any city that dumps its own trash in its own boundaries? Another example: Seattle was trying recently to force Snohomish county to accept a sewage treatment plant local residents wouldn't even be able to use.

Another way is to dump their human problems on the suburbs. Here the newest trick is to set up "tent cities" in suburban towns like Kirkland or Bothell for "the homeless" with the cooperation of fundamentalist Religious Left Churches who claim that the "separation of church and state" exempts them from zoning and other suburban regulation.

Mass transit is always geared to the urban core, even when the service would have greater ridership if it were to be between the suburbs. Is there a Metro Rapid Transit District which isn't a defacto subsidy for urban residents by the suburbs?

Also, if cities are so great, why is there every weekend an exodus along highways like I-90 (Seattle) and I-80 (Bay Area) eastward every Friday night and westward every Sunday night? (Monday on holiday weekends).If cities are so great, why don't they want to stay home?

What the writer fails to appreciate is that those midwestern islands he celebrates can also be thought of as a sign of parasitism. The ubanist philosophy can't survive low population density, and so colonizes those areas that did urbanize because they were a market center, or had the state university or capitol. University towns are especially at risk because those are one of the few places where they can actually "reproduce" new urbanists by the indoctrination of students.

Other than that, the only areas where urbanites are creating their own new centers in that sea of blue is around their vacation properties in Tahoe and the Colorado rockies, and even then they are coopting existing towns like Jackson or Bend instead of buillding new.

Doesn't using "sanity" and "San Francisco" in the same sentence prove that either you don't know the meaning of the former or else never visited the latter? I recall during my visit seeing the "armies of compassion" strewn along the sidewalks like so much rubbish, stirring only to rattle their cups at passersby.

Bart:

Japan has been economically stagnant for over a decade now with no signs things will ever improve. Israel folded on statehood for Palestine because otherwise demographics will make Israel itself an Islamic state within the decade. They're dying nations.

Bravo, Raoul!

Typical lib.

All those benefits that will supposedly get people to move to the city will have to be paid for.

How will they pay for them?

By taxing business.

No business = no jobs as businesses, and their employees, vote with their feet.

As they've been doing for, oh, about the last 40 years.

So by all means"editors of the Stranger" go ahead with that plan.

Just means more people and business in the exurbs, and in the Republican cities of the South and Sw.

Yeah baby.

"highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites."

It would seem to me that only the "highly educated" and the "gays" are not being eroded as voting blocs by the Republicans. Isn't this the first time in history that kids are more conservative than their parents?

It is funny, all those public school systems on this island chain are some of the worst in the nations. For example, Philly and Chicago are horrible school systems. Compassionate and caring my a**.

Randall:

The "highly educated" demographic is suspect, as well. Didn't those with college degrees go for Bush roughly 53:47?