Cities
Why the rural-urban divide is reshaping politics in nearly every country, what successful cities actually do, and what is changing about urban life globally.
(up from about 30% in 1950; projected near 70% by 2050)
(despite cities covering roughly 3% of the world's land surface)
(up from 2 in 1950; projected to be 43 by 2030)
A note on framing. Cities are one of the central organising features of modern life and one of the topics where political polarisation runs deepest. The rural-urban divide shapes voting behaviour in nearly every developed democracy. The page below tries to walk through the structural picture - what cities actually do, why they have become more politically salient, and what the next decades will reshape - without taking sides in the cultural argument. There are real trade-offs and real benefits in either direction; the data illuminates them better than the slogans typically do.
The world is now an urban world
For the first time in human history, more than half of all humans live in cities. The threshold was crossed around 2007. The trajectory is steady upward - the UN's projections place urban population at roughly 70% of the world by 2050. Different regions are at very different points on the curve. North America is about 83% urban. Europe is about 75%. Latin America is about 81%. East Asia is about 64% and rising fast. South Asia is about 35% and rising fast. Sub-Saharan Africa is about 44%, with the fastest growth rate of any region.
The reasons cities have grown are reasonably consistent across regions. Cities offer higher wages on average than rural areas. They concentrate education, healthcare, and cultural opportunities. They reduce the cost of finding work, a partner, a community. They allow specialisation that small populations cannot support. They cluster the kinds of economic activity (services, manufacturing for export, finance, technology) that rural economies cannot produce. The pull factors have been stronger than the push factors in most cases, with specific exceptions where rural-to-urban migration was forced by war, drought, or land dispossession.
What this looks like at the megacity level. Tokyo at around 37 million people in its metropolitan region. Delhi at around 33 million. Shanghai at around 30 million. São Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Mumbai, Beijing, Dhaka, and Osaka all over 20 million. Several others approaching that level. The largest cities of the developing world have become larger than most countries in the world. Their internal economies, infrastructure, governance, and political dynamics increasingly operate at a scale that traditional city governance was not designed for.
The rural-urban political divide
One of the most consistent political patterns of the last 20 years has been the deepening divide between urban and rural voters in developed democracies. Cities have become more left-leaning, more cosmopolitan, more pro-immigration, more concerned with cultural-progressive issues. Rural areas have become more right-leaning, more nationalist, more sceptical of immigration, more concerned with cultural-traditional issues. The divide is now larger than the older divides based on income or class in most countries, and it explains substantial fractions of recent election outcomes.
Why the divide deepened. Several factors compounded since the 1990s. Manufacturing decline hollowed out industrial small cities and rural towns where good non-college jobs had been concentrated. The technology and finance sectors that grew in their place clustered in already-large cities. University graduates moved to cities for jobs and stayed for the lifestyle, producing self-reinforcing concentration of educated, younger, more progressive populations in urban areas. Immigration concentrated in cities, both because that is where the jobs were and because pre-existing migrant communities were there. Cultural and media institutions clustered in cities, shaping what cosmopolitan and rural communities saw as normal. Each effect was modest individually; together they produced a measurable cultural and political separation.
What the divide produces politically. In countries with first-past-the-post electoral systems (US, UK, Canada), urban populations have become "wasted" votes - concentrated in fewer geographic units than their numbers would suggest, producing election outcomes that systematically over-represent rural voters. In proportional systems (Germany, Netherlands, the Nordic countries), the divide produces more directly proportional representation, but cultural polarisation around urban-rural lines persists. Either way, the divide has become a central organising fact of contemporary politics, often more predictive of voting behaviour than income, race, or religion.
What successful cities actually do
Cities vary enormously in how well they deliver the gains from concentration. Some cities (Tokyo, Singapore, Vienna, Zurich, Helsinki) consistently rank near the top of liveability and functionality measures. Others (Lagos, Karachi, parts of Mumbai and Mexico City) struggle with chronic infrastructure failure, traffic, pollution, and security problems despite their economic dynamism. The differences are not random. Specific structural choices matter.
Public transit. Cities that invest in functional public transit (Tokyo's rail, Singapore's MRT, Vienna's U-Bahn, Zurich's tram network) are dramatically more liveable than cities that have not. The reduction in private-vehicle dependence improves air quality, reduces traffic congestion, expands the geographic range of jobs accessible to non-driving residents, and makes streets usable for purposes other than parking. The investment is enormous and slow; the cumulative payoff over decades is among the largest urban-policy returns available.
Housing supply. Cities that build housing in proportion to demand (Tokyo's permissive zoning is the canonical case) avoid the affordability crisis that has hit most major Western cities (covered separately on this site). Cities that restrict construction (San Francisco, London, Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver) produce structural unaffordability that compounds across decades. The choice between accommodating growth and preserving existing neighbourhood character is a real trade-off; the cities that have chosen accommodation have produced substantially better outcomes for new residents and younger generations.
Public safety. Cities that manage crime and disorder competently produce cumulative quality-of-life advantages that are hard to overstate. The combination of effective but constrained policing, social services that reach vulnerable populations, careful urban design (lighting, foot traffic, mixed-use development), and political leadership that takes both safety and civil rights seriously produces dramatically better outcomes than cities that lean too far in either direction. The cities that get this right (most Western European, Japanese, Korean, Singaporean cities) are dramatically safer than their economic peers in less-well-managed contexts.
Public space. Parks, libraries, community centres, plazas, walkable streets, public swimming pools, public sports fields - the "third places" that are not home and not work - shape how a city is actually lived in. Cities that invest in these (Vienna, Copenhagen, Singapore again, parts of Boston, Barcelona) produce communities that feel different from cities where the public realm has been left to decay or has been privatised. The investment is unglamorous and the returns compound over generations.
Governance. Cities with reasonable autonomy from national government, professional civil services, accountable elected leadership, and the financial resources to actually execute their plans tend to perform much better than cities that lack any of these. The institutional architecture matters; the same city under different governance arrangements has produced very different outcomes.
The Western downtown crisis since 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent shift to remote and hybrid work have disrupted the central business districts of nearly every major Western city. Office occupancy in San Francisco, downtown Los Angeles, Manhattan, Chicago's Loop, central London, and similar central business districts has fallen substantially. Retail that depended on lunchtime and after-work foot traffic has struggled. Public transit ridership has not fully recovered. Tax revenue from office buildings has dropped. The "doom loop" framing - falling foot traffic produces falling business activity, which produces falling tax revenue, which produces reduced services, which produces further falling foot traffic - has been a real concern in several specific cities.
What is actually happening five years on. Office occupancy in the most-affected US cities is roughly 50-65% of pre-pandemic levels and has stabilised. Some downtowns (Manhattan especially) are recovering. Some (San Francisco specifically) are struggling more visibly. Office-to-residential conversion is happening but is technically and financially harder than the abstract case suggests. Retail mixes have shifted toward different uses (more food, less office-supply). The overall shape of central business districts is being remade, with substantial uncertainty about the end state.
What is sometimes missed. The crisis is concentrated in specific kinds of cities (large US coastal metros, parts of London) and is not uniform across cities. Mid-sized US cities that did not have monoculture-CBD economies have largely recovered. European cities have generally fared better than US cities because their downtowns were always more mixed-use. Asian cities returned to office work much faster and have not seen comparable disruption. The "future of cities" framing that some commentary uses generalises from a specific subset of cities to a global story that does not match the underlying data.
How major cities actually compare
The cities below are a small sample chosen to illustrate variation. None of them is "average."
The takeaway: the variation among cities is among the largest of any social comparison. Some cities deliver enormous quality-of-life advantages; others struggle to deliver basic functionality at scale. The differences are not primarily about wealth - Vienna is poorer per capita than San Francisco but delivers measurably better outcomes on most metrics - but about specific structural choices made consistently over decades.
The paths from here
Urban life globally is being reshaped by several forces simultaneously. Each path below is one realistic shape the next two decades could take.
Continued urbanisation in the developing world
African and South Asian cities continue to absorb hundreds of millions of new residents over the next 25 years. The infrastructure investment required is enormous; the share that actually gets built will determine whether these cities deliver the productivity gains historical urbanisation has produced or get stuck in chronic infrastructure failure.
Will it happen? The demographic pressure is locked in. Whether the infrastructure keeps up depends on choices being made now about transit investment, housing policy, and governance design in countries with limited fiscal space. Most are under-investing relative to the scale of growth.
Western downtown reinvention
Office-heavy central business districts adapt by converting to residential, mixed-use, and entertainment functions. The recovery is uneven - some cities reinvent successfully, some experience long-term decline. The shape of "downtown" by 2040 looks different from the 2010s pattern, with implications for transit, retail, and tax bases.
Will it happen? Pieces are happening. NYC and several other cities have begun office-to-residential conversions at scale. Mid-sized cities have largely already adapted. The most-stressed cities (San Francisco specifically) face harder paths. The base case is selective reinvention with substantial city-by-city variation.
Climate adaptation reshapes which cities thrive
Heat, water stress, sea-level rise, and storm intensity reshape which cities are pleasant and functional places to live. Some highly successful current cities (Phoenix, parts of Florida and the US Gulf Coast, parts of South Asia and the Middle East) face increasing climate stress. Some currently-secondary cities (Buffalo, Minneapolis, parts of Northern Europe) become more attractive. Migration patterns within and between countries adjust over decades.
Will it happen? Already starting. Insurance markets have begun pricing climate exposure into specific markets. Some climate-stressed cities have started to lose population. The pattern accelerates as climate effects intensify; the speed depends partly on how quickly information about climate exposure becomes salient in housing-purchase decisions.
Mid-sized cities capture growth
Remote and hybrid work, plus continued affordability stress in the largest cities, drive sustained migration to mid-sized cities (Austin, Nashville, Raleigh, Boise, Lyon, Manchester, Bristol, Bilbao, etc.). These cities grow into more mature commercial and cultural hubs. The geographic distribution of economic activity becomes meaningfully more dispersed.
Will it happen? Partly already happening. Several mid-sized US cities grew substantially during the pandemic; the growth has continued in some, slowed in others. Whether the pattern sustains depends on whether remote work patterns continue to allow it and on whether the mid-sized cities maintain the affordability advantages that made them attractive in the first place.
Megacity governance reform
The largest cities of the developing world (Lagos, Cairo, Mumbai, Manila, Karachi, Dhaka, Mexico City) achieve the governance, infrastructure, and institutional capacity to deliver public goods at the scale their populations require. Public transit, housing, water, sanitation, and security all reach functional levels. The cities transition from struggling-to-cope to genuinely-functional.
Will it happen? Some are succeeding more than others. Mexico City has improved substantially. Mumbai's metro construction is happening at scale. Lagos has had more governance failures than successes recently. The variation is large; betting on which megacities will succeed at this transition is difficult.
The political divide between cities and rural areas continues to deepen
Urban and rural populations continue to diverge culturally and politically. Election outcomes increasingly reflect this geographic divide more than older income or class divides. Federal and state-level politics in countries with strong urban-rural divides produce repeated cycles of conflict, with regional autonomy and devolution becoming larger themes in politics.
Will it happen? Already happening. The divide has been deepening for two decades and shows no signs of reversing. Whether it produces constructive devolution (more regional autonomy) or destructive conflict (deeper polarisation, weaker national institutions) depends on choices that have not been made yet.
Technology reshapes urban life
Autonomous vehicles, drone delivery, advanced public transit (high-frequency buses, light rail expansions, hyperloop-adjacent technologies), AI-aided urban planning, and other technologies materially change what cities can deliver. Some changes (autonomous vehicles especially) could either increase urban density (by making short-trip cars more efficient) or decrease it (by making long commutes more tolerable); the direction matters and is uncertain.
Will it happen? Pieces are arriving. The pace is slower than enthusiasts predicted; the longer-run trajectory is real. The shape of cities in 2050 will probably look different from today partly because of these technologies; the specific shape is genuinely uncertain.
The realistic forecast is, again, a mix. Continued developing-world urbanisation (path 1) is the dominant force. Mid-sized city growth (path 4) and Western downtown reinvention (path 2) reshape the rich-world landscape. Climate adaptation (path 3) becomes a larger variable through the 2030s. The political divide (path 6) deepens absent specific reform energy. The cumulative effect: cities matter more than ever, in different ways than they did 20 years ago.
Where serious analysts disagree
Cities are one of the topics where careful researchers using similar data reach different conclusions. Each reading below is held by named scholars worth engaging directly.
Cities are the engines of human progress and need to grow more
Cities concentrate the human capital, networks, and institutional density that produce most economic growth, innovation, and cultural production. The constraints on urban growth (restrictive zoning, NIMBY politics, infrastructure under-investment) are some of the largest self-imposed barriers to prosperity in the rich world. The case for letting cities grow - through housing reform, transit investment, and appropriate density - is one of the strongest evidence-based policy arguments available.
Held by: Edward Glaeser (Harvard, "Triumph of the City"), Alain Bertaud (NYU), and most working urban economists. The data on agglomeration effects is robust; the political case for acting on it has been weaker than the evidence base would predict.
The rural-urban divide is the central political fact of our time
The cultural and political separation between cities and rural areas has become the dominant axis of contemporary politics, more important than income, race, or religion in shaping voting behaviour. Understanding this divide - what drives it, what could narrow it, what makes it worse - is essential for anyone trying to make sense of contemporary politics. Many of the most heated political fights are downstream of this geographic-cultural separation.
Held by: Will Wilkinson, Ezra Klein, and a substantial body of contemporary political analysis. The voting-pattern data robustly supports the framing. The harder question is what to do about it - the structural drivers (different economies, different demographics, different cultural reference points) are not easily addressed.
Western city decline is a real phenomenon, not a temporary disruption
The post-2020 decline of several major Western cities (San Francisco specifically, parts of Chicago, parts of New York, parts of London) is not just a pandemic-era disruption that is reverting. It reflects deeper trends: housing unaffordability driving out middle-class families, public-safety challenges driving out small businesses, declining trust in city governance, and the rise of remote work making city presence optional for high-earning knowledge workers. Some of these cities will recover; some will not, and the political conversation has been slow to acknowledge the differences.
Held by: Joel Kotkin and a tradition of urban-policy analysis sceptical of the "cities always win" framing. The case is contested but has been more empirically supported by post-2020 data than the optimistic counter-case.
The real urban story is in the developing world
Western urban debates (downtown decline, NIMBY politics, gentrification) are local stories about a tiny share of global urbanisation. The actual urban story of the 21st century is in Lagos, Mumbai, Dhaka, Manila, Cairo, Karachi, Kinshasa, and the long list of similarly-situated cities absorbing hundreds of millions of new residents. Whatever happens in San Francisco or Manchester, the structural shape of global urbanisation is determined by what happens in those cities.
Held by: Kim Dovey, parts of UN-Habitat, and a tradition of global urban scholarship. Their argument is that the political and academic attention to Western city issues is disproportionate to their share of the actual story. The data on global urban populations supports the framing.
Density and walkability are health and climate imperatives
The dispersed-suburb development pattern that dominated US growth from 1945 to roughly 2010 is incompatible with climate targets, public health (the chronic disease burden of car-dependent lifestyles is large), and adequate response to aging societies (suburbs do not work well for non-driving older adults). The future-of-cities conversation should be substantially about how to retrofit auto-dependent regions into more walkable forms, which has barely begun in most US metros.
Held by: Strong Towns (Charles Marohn), the Congress for the New Urbanism, and a body of public-health and transit research. The argument has been gaining traction; the political fights at municipal level have been intense and the change has been slow.
None of these readings is fully right or wrong. What can be said from the available evidence: cities are real engines of progress and have specific governance failures that limit how much progress they actually deliver; the rural-urban divide is real and politically central; Western city decline is uneven but real in some cases; the global urbanisation story is dominated by developing-world cities; density and walkability matter more than dispersed-development policy has historically allowed for. Each of these is worth holding simultaneously rather than picking one as the right framing.
What this means for you
Cities touch everyday life through where you live, where you work, what your daily life looks like, and the politics of the place around you. A few practical observations:
If you are choosing where to live
The differences between cities are far larger than the differences between countries on most quality-of-life metrics that matter to daily living. A walkable, transit-served, affordable mid-sized city often delivers a better life than a more famous large city in the same country at substantially lower cost. The trade-offs involved (career opportunities versus daily quality of life) are worth thinking through deliberately rather than defaulting to the most prestigious option. Climate exposure of specific cities is now a real input for 30-year housing decisions.
If you live in a stressed city
Most "city is dying" framings are exaggerated; most "city has problems" framings are accurate. The constructive position is to be involved in the specific governance choices that determine whether the city improves or continues to decline. Local elections, planning commissions, transit board appointments, and ballot measures are the actual mechanisms; getting involved at this level produces more change than complaining about it on social media.
If you live in a small town or rural area
The data on rural decline in the US specifically (closing hospitals, shrinking population, fewer jobs for non-college-educated workers) is real and has not been adequately addressed by either party's policy framework. Rural broadband, healthcare access, infrastructure investment, and economic-development support are all areas where specific federal and state policy matters. Voting on these specifics rather than on cultural-issue proxies is more useful than the politicised conversation suggests.
If you are voting on local policy
Most consequential urban policy is local: zoning, permitting, transit, public safety, schools, parks, public health. The local elections that determine these are usually decided by small numbers of engaged voters - and the engaged voters are typically older, longer-resident, and more property-owning than the general population. Younger and renter voters who actually engage in local politics have outsize effect. The single most under-invested civic action is consistent participation in local elections and hearings.
If you are thinking about long-term investment
Real estate values over 30 years correlate strongly with city quality - urban governance, infrastructure investment, climate exposure, employment trajectory, and demographic dynamics. The cities and neighbourhoods that have invested well do measurably better over decades than the cities that have not. None of this is investment advice; it is observing where the structural variables point. Mid-sized cities that have invested in transit, housing, and public realm are showing measurable advantages over large cities that have not.
The mechanics behind this
The cities story sits on top of three deeper mechanisms covered elsewhere on this site. If the analysis above depends on ideas you want to understand first, these fundamentals make the conversation more legible:
