"Revolution of Urban Rebels"

Edward Glaeser argues urbanization is a catalyst for democracy:

Revolution of urban rebels, by Edward L. Glaeser, Commentary, Boston Globe: The Fourth of July is an opportunity to reflect on the long, difficult path to liberty. The organized uprisings, like the American Revolution, that toppled tyrants were often urban affairs that started with surreptitious meetings in crowded pubs and guildhalls. They were led by creatures of the city: merchants, lawyers, weavers, butchers, and brewers. As we celebrate our freedom at spacious suburban barbecues, we should remember that the road to freedom started on far more crowded city streets.

In the fight for freedom between dictatorship and democracy, dictatorship starts with a big edge.

Dictatorships have a small number of insiders who have strong incentives to fight for their regime. Because the benefits of democracy are so widely shared, no one has particularly strong incentives to fight to create or preserve representative government.

Democracies have a massive free-rider problem where all of us have a natural tendency to let someone else die for our liberty. Solving this free rider problem requires coordination and this is what urban density has done for millennia. Urban density connects citizens and enables them to meet and plan and talk. With enough talking, groups like the Sons of Liberty may even convince themselves that it is worth dying for a common cause. Monarchies flourished in our agricultural past, because effective democratic opposition was far more difficult to organize in a dispersed rural setting. ...

Our revolution had its origins in the urban connections between John Hancock, the two Adams cousins, and assorted other enemies of British colonial policy. Brought together by Boston, a merchant-prince could help finance riots led by a brewer. The lawyers could argue cases and the writers could push pamphlets. David Hackett Fischer's account of Paul Revere taught us that this silversmith was not a lone rider, but part of a dense, urban network that collectively fought for independence. The most important urban interactions of all may have occurred in the Second Continental Congress in the days before July 4, 1776. By connecting in a city, the founding fathers hung together instead of hanging separately.

Across countries today, there is a robust correlation between urbanization and democracy. This correlation reflects many things, such as the tendency of more urban places to be richer and better educated, but it also surely reflects the role that cities play in supporting the coordinated action that creates and defends democracies. So enjoy your Fourth of July with as much greenery as you like, but also remember that city air made you free.

Comments

[Farrar]

Glaeser makes some good points, but this does not strike me as universal truth. As a counter example, i immediately think of Shays's Rebellion, where a democratic rural rebellion was put down by the urban power structure, arguably a combination of profiteering wartime speculators.

I hope Bostonians remember this and send a bevy of protesting letters to the Globe.

[Farrar]

One could also argue that urbanization is an opportunity for financial interests interests to take control of democracies.

[hari]

Farrar - Exactly!

It's happening right now in Indian subcontinent at a rate unimaginable a decade or more ago. The democratic deficit is felt by the working/rural class at the bottom of the totem pole while multiple political parties struggle for power and whatnot at the (urbanized) Centre (+1.2 billion people speaking some 500 different vernacular languages/etc).

I usually compare it to centrifual vs. centripetal forces - similar to urban vs. rural divide - resulting in a constant demeaning of democratic principles of the original revolution. Afterall, if you can't remove rural poverty, how can you rightly justify the affluence of the urban society?

[Farrar]

Yes, Hari, and it keeps happening in the USA. I think the latest manifestation is called the housing bubble, the mortgage bubble, or something like that.

[ken melvin]

So, should I add democracy to such as capitalism, free markets, entrepreneurship, and free enterprise to those myths that are used and manipulated to con the masses?

[Real Person from the Real World]

When I lived in the city, I had friends, I could walk to the grocey store, and there was public transportation where you could get almost anywhere. I now live in the suburbs with expensive gas, a car with 130k miles and bad transmission, low pay, and a few acquaintances. If I could afford it, I'd move back! At least I could walk to the grocey store and get some exercise.

[Rob Dawg]

Yes, yes. The densest conurbation in the US, Manhattan is such a shining example of the power of retail democracy. Not. And of course in the Prourbanist revisionist history there weren't and agrarian centric members of the founding fathers like Jefferson or Washington. Cripes, the Richard Florida wing of cenurbs anonymous won't hesitate to corrupt any story no matter how noble.

[Farrar]

Ken M

The myths are not about the existence of democracy. Fortunately there remain great swathes of it even today. The myths concern JUST WHO are the democrats and WHO the anti democrats.

[prostratedragon]

Are we now living the contrapositive validation?