Urban & Rural Divide

There’s some things I’m more conservative on, like guns and immigration, some things I’m more liberal on, like the economy in some ways and the environment in most ways, and some things I don’t see eye to eye with either party, thou I usually end up voting NDP (I’m from Canada) cause the economy and environment are more important to me.
Most people who’re political tend to squarely fall into one or the other camp, or if they’re say socially conservative and economically liberal, they’ll vote liberal if the economy is more important to them, or conservative if their society is.
And most urban people tend to be liberal and rural people conservative, and that makes sense when you think about it.

Of course rural people, who tend to live more traditional, self sufficient and independent lives, would have more traditional, self sufficient and independent moral and political values.
Of course they would be more weary of outsiders, aliens, foreigners, immigrants, and think it’s a man’s duty to protect himself and his family from intruders, invaders, threats, as some of them live miles away from the nearest police station, and they hunt, fish, camp, and defend their livestock from predators, they’re comfortable with guns.
How is a latte sipping urbanite ever going to see eye to eye with a beer guzzling ruralite, it’s just never going to happen, or very rarely, yet because of the way Canada and the US are divided, the politics and agenda of one is going to interfere, as they see it, with that of the other.

Maybe our countries should be divided along different lines.
What if we made all urban centers into their own states/provinces, and all rural peripheries into their own states/provinces, that way everyone could get the politics they want.
For example, the state of Washington could be divided into two states, urban centers like Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, which’re situated on the west coast, and rural peripheries in the interior.

Cause the interior votes conservative most of the time, you could conceal and carry there, but in Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and other parts of the west coast you’d have to keep your gun at home, or you may not be permitted a gun at all within city limits.
It makes sense when you think about it, that these vastly different environments and the people who inhabit them, and are shaped by them, should have their own vastly different politics, suitable to the geography and culture of the region.

But how would things like say immigration work?
Airports are usually located in urban areas, so if urbanites vote to increase immigration, and ruralites to decrease it, what ruralites think wouldn’t really matter, cause urbanites control the airports, so unless you radically changed some other things, this would give urbanites complete control over immigration.
However ruralites would have complete control over agriculture, since nearly all agriculture is in rural areas…well rural areas are pretty much synonymous with agricultural areas.

And then there’s wilderness, with few to no inhabitants, what should be done about them?
Perhaps they can be governed by both urban, commercial areas and rural, agricultural areas, or perhaps they could just be left ungoverned, in a state of anarchy, up for grabs, *laughs.
And what of suburban and industrial areas, should they have their own politics as well?
Perhaps those things affecting everyone, could be governed by everyone, where as those things affecting people more locally, could be governed more locally than they are now.

Urbanites usually vote liberal, and ruralites conservative, but suburbanites and industrialites can kind of swing either way, so it’d be interesting to see what sort of politicians each of them would elect.
I think suburbanites tend to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal, where as with industrialites it’s the reverse, but that’s just a wild guess.

Healthcare and education could end up looking very different depending on whether you live in urban centers or rural outskirts.
Education in rural areas could be much more religious and values based.
Healthcare in sophisticated urban areas might incorporate more alternative medical practices like naturopathy, acupuncture/pressure and the like.
Give ruralites and urbanites different elections, and different parties to choose from with different policies, I think it’d be an interesting sociopolitical experiment.

Now there are some exceptions to this rule, but from my research, not enough to disprove the rule
It’s a strong tendency, a recurring pattern.
Of course it doesn’t always divvy up so neatly, like poor people in both urban and rural areas tend to vote similarly, same thing with the urban and rural rich.
There could be like different parties reflecting that, one for the urban rich, one for the urban poor, and one for the rural rich, and the rural poor.
Yea it just gives everyone more options, more customization, and I’m all for that.
Different peoples should have a government that most reflects their unique values and concerns.

All this is not to say that all major or sociopolitical differences between people can be thought of in terms of urban/rural, or class, but it’s certainly a very important one, and one that perhaps hasn’t been adequately addressed by how our current democracies are structured.

As our countries get more and more developed and urban, politics gradually shift more and more towards the liberal end of the spectrum in many ways, but if we were to ever dedevelop, due to a paradigm shift, or environmental/man-made catastrophe, we might see things move in the opposite direction.