The Economist has a great article in this past issue about how more and more of us in the U.S. are living in “landslide counties” - local regions where political proclivities are pronounced and tend to vote consistently, and strongly, one way or the other. The reason? The article suggests people are choosing to move into neighborhoods where they feel their neighbors share the same values as they do.

Although this is not an entirely new phenomenon - there are conservative parts of the country, and liberal ones, the whole red state-blue state sort of explanation - this brings home the greater granularity with which this sort of division is shaping up to be.

I remember shortly after the 2004 election, Dan Savage wrote that this country is not composed of red states and blue ones, but rather an urban archipelago that is deeply blue, and a red suburban and rural America that is just as richly hued. In other words, urban Texas is more likely to vote Democratic than rural California. The map to the right describes the phenomenon well, and another (which I can’t find right now), shows the same map but distorted to reflect the relative size of voting populations (which demonstrates that red & blue are almost evenly matched).

I can’t argue with the logic, personally. I like living in cities, and have much more in common with people of different sexual orientation and ethnicity in cities, with respect to my values, ideas around leisure, entertainment and culture, than other gay white people living in rural and suburban areas (they do exist, but probably not as great in number). There’s something to be said for the ability to have a decent, respectable conversation with your neighbors about something deeper than the weather. In today’s volatile and sharply-partisan political climate, maybe that’s not possible in “mixed” neighborhoods.

As long as they don’t resort to insults or violence, I am perfectly content to share a block or even a building with people who share different values from my own (and I suspect that I already do, although I haven’t polled people in my apartment building).

The question that might come up, however, is if we are just setting ourselves up for stony silence and pent-up hostility, interrupted with the occasional flareup, between adjoining communities that used to intermingle and share resources. That scenario reminds me of what the Dutch called zuilen, a perverse form of which sprouted up in South Africa.