It's become somewhat of a meme now when there is a story on crime, or other bad things happening in a city, people pipe up and say "That's how it is in blue cities!" "This could only happen in a Democrat city!" However, I noticed they never say "... and that's why only want to live in X" or "... that would never happen in Y".

If living in "blue cities" are such a nightmare, where are all these Utopian "red cities" that people are apparently in favor of?

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[–] 62 points 1 year ago

where are all these Utopian "red cities" that people are apparently in favor of?

They do not and can not exist. Conservatism is an antisocial and anti-intellectual, authoritarian ideology. This pretty much rules it out of success in most conventional metrics.

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  • [–] 94 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Staying afloat using tax dollars from blue states

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    From what I've noticed, cities tend to be more liberal than rural areas. I can't think of a major city off the top of my head that is a republican stronghold. I've got to go to work but I found these two links which may help.

    https://townsoftheusa.com/most-conservative-cities-in-usa/

    https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/15-most-conservative-major-cities-in-the-united-states-883419/

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Miami, maybe. But I think they're still pretty left in comparison to the Rest of Florida

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Miami has its share of violent crime, doesn't it?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Absolutely, thats something you get with population centers, but I think they're farther right politically than most major US citites.

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  • [–] 175 points 1 year ago (25 children)

    the funny thing is... getting people to live closer together encourages empathy.

    living in the middle of nowhere reduces empathy... this is why people living in bumfuck are empathy-lacking tools calling themselves 'conservatives'

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  • [–] [S] 45 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    It seems like a lot of the time they are like "boy, crime is higher".... but if you live in a city that's just a fact of life. It's pretty obvious that there will be less crime out in the sticks. I wouldn't really attribute this to any "blue" policies.

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Part of "less crime in the sticks" is a population effect. The rate of violent crime in New York City is 494/100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in the whole state of Alabama, from its stickiest sticks to the 225,000-resident Huntsville metropolis, is 404/100,000, which isn't that different, in my book.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    I suspect that's just because of Birmingham, and possibly Mobile. They have pretty bad crime rates, and Birmingham is the state's main "blue city", at least based on how counties voted in the 2024 election.

    Birmingham had a violent crime rate of 1440 per 100k, making it one the worst cities in the nation for violent crime.

    Mobile had a crime rate of 825 per 100k. Mobile's county was slightly red in the 2023 election.

    Meanwhile Huntsville (who was slightly red in that same election) had a violent crime rate of 133 per 100k, and has been proudly claiming a 100% arrest and conviction rate for homicide cases. So to answer @yarr@feddit.nl's question, I guess Huntsville is an example of a successful "red" city (although it may be less successful in coming years due to Trump's NASA cuts).

    Rural Alabama (excluding counties that were classified as metropolitan) had a violent crime rate of 248 per 100k, making it less safe than Huntsville but far better than the state average of 494 per 100k.

    I'm not going to actually claim that the crime rate is just from politics, Huntsville has a big aerospace industry and it's probably more of an education/class thing than anything else. But regardless those are the violent crime rate numbers for 2023, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    100% arrest and conviction rate doesnt really mean anything. Sounds like theyre just arresting whoever and corrupting the jury to convict. Iirc only about 1/3 homicides are solvable?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2022/07/no-homicide-case-went-unsolved-in-huntsville-in-2021.html

    Here's an article on it, it was actually in 2021 (where the rest of the data was from 2023) so the 100% rate probably isn't the case anymore. Basically they attribute it to having a really low base crime rate compared to other cities, saying that it frees them up to give a lot of attention and resources to each one.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's usually lower per capita. Right wing media likes to report in nominal numbers, because have 10 crimes sounds like a lot more than 2 crimes. But when you see it's 10 out of 1000 (1%) people vs 2 out of 50 (4%) it doesn't look as good.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I was biking a dirt road near my rural neighborhood and saw a sign at somebody's driveway that said "if you can read this you're within range" and wondered how country folk got the stereotype of being friendly and kind. I really miss living in the city.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    propaganda from the movies and shows. probably they need economic businesses to thier area, so they make up an image so people would go there, but NOT LIVE THERE. Yellowstone being one of those shows, and many other shows make reference of "southern hospitality"

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Not saying you're wrong, because I believe I've seen patterns like this (but can also think of quite a fee counter examples). But do you have any evidence for this, or is it just a hypothesis?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban%E2%80%93rural_political_divide

    the empathy is an inference from a documentary i saw where people have had some success in rural communities changing hearts and minds by befriending them. it turns out its easy to lack empathy for people youve never associated with and you have always been told are less than yourself.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    It's the opposite in Sweden. Countryside leans left and cities lean right.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    i think there are different socioconomics in play in sweden. lots of real immigration management issues unlike the united states made up ones.

    also, sweden is more than an order of magnitude different in size (< 5% actually) of the unites states. 'rural' sweden isnt the same thing as 'rural' US.

    also, i doubt the swedish rednecks are thirsty to get back to their slaving roots.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The trend has been true for longer than the last 25 years, well before the current immigration crisis.

    The alternate explanation is that the party or parties that has the most pro rural policies eg. farm subsidies are popular among the rural people and vice versa.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    what're you on about? the most voted party in all 3 big cities is the socdems, rural places are WAY WAY WAY more right leaning than urban areas.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The most voted party in most places is S. But they are much more popular in more rural towns. So is SD but they mainly take the votes from the right before left.

    S:M:SD Biggest: Stockholm 28:19:10 Göteborg: 27:18:15 Malmö 30:18:16

    Smallest: Dorotea: 43:7:21 Bjurholm: 30:20;24 Sorsele: 39:12:25.

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  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago (24 children)

    This explains the rural/city divide and why conservatives view blue cities as hell holes:

    How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

    Having lived both sides, the whole thing not only resonates with me, it rings my fucking bell. If there was one article I could force all Americans to read, this is it.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    Thats a pretty good read. I often think about a lot of that. But I never come up with a way to help the rural population much. Thier way of life is dying, has been for a few hundred years. But it is still essential. They don't like handouts or even assistance. So how do you help them?

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    I'd start by taking to top off Fox News and see them dance the hemp fandango. I cannot overstate how they've poisoned America. Had some education in journalism so I'm better tooled than most to spot media manipulation. Sure they come out with in-your-face lies now and again, but they're mostly subtle, which is far more evil. Next, I'd go after our social media overlords. These snakes have to be decapitated, literally.

    Lately I've thought that the best way to heal America's rural/urban divide is to point out that the rich are fucking us. It's not the farmer or the blue-haired girl, not the LGBT folks or gun nuts, certainly not the immigrants. If I could hammer a single message into the American zeitgeist it would be this, "The wealthy are hurting all of us. Fight them every step of the way."

    I know Bane's the bad guy and straight psychotic, but his speech in The Dark Knight Rises makes we want to fucking cheer.

    We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please. Start by storming Blackgate, and freeing the oppressed! Step forward those who would serve. For and army will be raised. The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure. Courts will be convened. Spoils will be enjoyed. Blood will be shed. The police will survive, as they learn to serve true justice. This great city... it will endure. Gotham will survive!

    There is no hope until the rich live in fear of the masses.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    To people from small towns, everyone in a city is 'wealthy', they must be to afford the insane cost of living right? But thats part of the problem. They don't realize the people spending $2500 a month on rent are spending 80% of their paycheck, or that they can't build any savings or eger hope to own a house or even a car because of it. They make no distinction between the actual rich people who live in cities and everyone else, and the state of America right now IS them fighting back against the 'rich'. Until these people understand the orders of magnitude the people actually fucking us are over the rest of us i don't know what can be done. To them anyone with a college degree is a wealthy elite.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    This post hits in a way I hadn't quite figured out to myself. No wonder they still buy into the welfare queen thing. I've got to think on this a bit, woke me to a thing I hadn't considered.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    To expand on what @emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com is saying, I live rural because I don't make enough to live in the city. My town is rapidly gentrifying and I might not afford to live next to cows any more pretty soon. City folk spend more on rent than I make in a month.

    A lot of our 'welfare queen' perspective is colored by the fact that tax-funded services are usually concentrated in the city. I keep petitioning my county transit authority for better rural bus service, but the best they can do is make the city bus lines run every 15 minutes instead of every half an hour. Meanwhile, I'm paying uber $50 just to get to a doctor's appointment and wait to catch a ride home when a friend gets off work. Food costs more for worse quality in rural areas, so food stamps don't go as far as they would in the city. Welfare in the city feels like you could live like a queen off it. It's not entirely true, because the amount you get is scaled to income, but per dollar, you do get more for your welfare in cities.

    There's also that city dwellers can get really nasty about rural folk. I've never voted for a republican in my life, but living out here makes people assume the worst of me. I get told that living rural means I'm a bootlicking hick that's too stupid to know what's good for me, so it's hard to sell that they deserve sympathy and we don't.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I’m sure these services are a big part of it - you can’t see all the poverty assistance spread out across a wide rural region but you can see there’s no bus service.

    Certainly some services only work with higher population densities, but that’s why some of us prefer cities. Rural areas have advantages too, but either way is a compromise. We each made a choice where to live.

    But turn this back to what would you do? As a liberal elite urban snob, i freely agree that my ideas are not likely to work well: maybe you don’t want internet service, education, connectivity to the modern world, infrastructure, fine. But im trying and i dont know what else to try. Step up and propose something. I don’t have any say for your county but if you say you need rural bus service, I’m all for that. And I’ll go further and say we should fund intercity rail, and rural bus service to all the towns it passes, to open more of the world to both of us. Stand up, tell us what you need, and you just might get it and more …. It’s not charity it’s a pooled resource making life better for us all.

    This article pisses me off a bit, because it does seem likely, but there is no one that people on the left like, who is so corrupt, spiteful, narcissistic, destructive as Trump. We’d never vote to tear everything down, including the democratic traditions that are the foundation of our society. Plus if your strength and independence is so core to your self-image, where is it? Voting for a tantrum to knock everything off the table is no one’s idea of strength. Instead of denigrating what other people try to do for you, stand up and tell us what you need. Make a proposal we can all get behind. A big difference this article misses is that we want the best for you and will act to improve your life if you meet us half away, we have the entire resources of the country pooled to help all of us, where rural MAGA voted for lashing out, for hurting people

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    maybe you don’t want internet service, education, connectivity to the modern world, infrastructure, fine

    Okay, this is one of those weird assumptions that people have about rural folk that I do not understand. Why does everybody assume that the 2k people living in my town don't want any of that stuff? It's one of the barriers I keep running into with the bus service, y'all city folk assume that we don't want it even though we're asking for it.

    Plus if your strength and independence is so core to your self-image, where is it? Voting for a tantrum to knock everything off the table is no one’s idea of strength.

    My town went blue. Most of my neighborhood are noncitizen farm workers who couldn't vote at all. Assuming all rural areas are stereotypical alabama is frankly insulting. You get a pass, because you don't live up here, but it's infuriating when I hear the same bullshit coming out of locals followed with "that's why I voted against the rural school levy, they don't deserve it".

    A big difference this article misses is that we want the best for you and will act to improve your life if you meet us half away

    Except that's not showing up in any real way. For example, I'm currently looking at the worker retraining programs, and the closest one is 70 miles away. Why should I not complain about that?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    For example, I’m currently looking at the worker retraining programs, and the closest one is 70 miles away

    And yet this was one of the major points where Hillary Clinton lost. Part of her platform was greatly expanding job training opportunities. People shit all over that …. While they had a point that those haven’t always worked well in the past, at least it’s something. At least it’s better than the guy lying to everyone’s face with no intention of doing anything.

    Why vote Democrat where some people would benefit from job training when you can vote for some blowhard spouting gibberish who will just make your life harder?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Why does everybody assume that the 2k people living in my town don’t want any of that stuff?

    I did grow up sort of rural. I do know what it’s like to have fewer people, fewer amenities. But my town always managed to vote for at least good school funding.

    But it is all politics. I started from conservative attitude and have gone much more progressive over time. Part of that is moving to a more progressive city and seeing how well it works. But most of my life it’s been “you deserve the same benefits that I have”. The same quality education, connectivity, infrastructure, all the modern amenities that make up a good quality of life. But I keep voting for that when it seems like rural conservative areas are the ones voting against it, those who would most benefit, are most against. Most of my life I could understand where they’re coming from, most of my life I could see the logic. I just can’t anymore. The modern conservative/progressive divide just doesn’t make any sense. Maybe part of it is money. In my conservative phase I cared a lot about being fiscally responsible and there was never enough money to go around. But now I have a better idea where the money comes from. It’s my money. I live in a major city that is the economic life blood of the region in a blue “donor” state that gives more to the nation than it takes. I’m voting to spend my money on your buses, your internet, your renewable energy, your education and job training so we can all benefit and I don’t understand why conservative people shit all Over that.

    I also used to be conservative for strong family values, but that really seems performative and inconsistent with what I consider family values. Don’t be all self-righteous with your family values that really don’t seem to value families.

    Why should I not complain about that?

    You should complain. You deserve better.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I’m voting to spend my money on your buses, your internet, your renewable energy, your education and job training so we can all benefit and I don’t understand why conservative people shit all Over that.

    You should complain. You deserve better.

    Pick one? We complain, and y'all go off on that whole rant in your second paragraph that boils down to 'how can you be so ungrateful for all this help I'm giving you', when we're not getting help? You understand how frustrating that is, right?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yet the reason you’re getting none of that is your own conservative flock. I have no idea what you need but I’ll damn well try. Be ungrateful if you want. Turn it down if you want. Reject all hope for the future if you want but then don’t come crying to the rest of us. . But don’t be trying to tear down my world too. Don’t be getting self-righteous about it. Don’t claim its not fiscally conservative when you’re getting more money than you paid in.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    As a middle-aged, white, gun nut in the South, I'm definitely not feeling that urban liberals want the best for me. I'm liberal to the left of Obama, many of us are! But social media tells me I'm a racist cunt who should die in a fire.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Did you vote for the racists and fascists? Vote for suspending human rights, kidnapping people off the streets with no due process? Current politics have really made me understand how much white privilege I have and this is the fullest time in my life that I’ve been “woke” enough to be grateful for my skin color. What is going on now is way beyond the pale.

    This is the first time that politics aren’t two slightly different positions where I can understand both, but one side is clearly anathema to everything we’ve ever professed as a country for the last 200 years.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    fwiw if you haven't done so already you could suggest a public transport taxi system, we have that here in sweden for rural areas and it works okay. Waaaaaaay cheaper to operate than actual bus routes, and it means everyone has some service even if it's pretty shitty.

    basically the public transport org just operates taxis that run at set hours, and you can order a ride between any rural address and one of a list of select places in the city. It costs the same as any other public transport operated by the pt org and if multiple people in roughly the same area book within the same time slot then they use a minibus and collect everyone in one run.
    You order the ride X hours in advance (in our case 1 hour) and when booking you get a specific time when you should be ready to get picked up.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    I know Bane's the bad guy and straight psychotic, but his speech in The Dark Knight Rises makes we want to fucking cheer.

    Wft... Bane is a working class hero, and this gives you power over me

    I'd also like to point out that the joker burned a pyramid of money. A deflationary move that helps ordinary Americans. What did he get for his efforts? A billionaire takes it upon himself to beat him up.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Well there's Dayton Ohio which is a successful red city if you look at how they vote and literally nothing else. Jesus fuck their crime rate says magnificent things about the democrats

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    With the new gerrymandering 2.0 Ohio is proposing, soon all of their cities will be "red" (on paper)

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I think San Antonio is about as red as it gets for a city its size

    Salt Lake City obviously but that's a different story

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Houston is as well considering it's massive but full of mostly sprawled suburbs and tons of oil people or friends/relatives of oil people.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    A small town, or a suburb of a city that is described as "a great place to raise a family". From what I have seen, that usually means one of two things:

    1. The town/suburb is closer to the city, but is wealthy, real estate is expensive, usually very car-centric, which excludes anyone poor (or even middle class, sometimes).

    2. The town/village is far away from the nearest city, not necessarily wealthy, but usually ran by a group of people that know each other (good old boys club), probably heavy on religion or other "traditional" values.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    universal to all places that claim to be "a great place to raise a family" is that they are quite possibly the worst place to raise children, short of the middle of an active warzone or Fuckass wyoming with 4 hours' drive to the nearest human being

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago
    [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Cities are not conducive for fascism, so fash in the USA mostly live outside of cities. They're hoarding their stolen land and screaming into a rural echo chamber. That's the only way they can maintain their delusions.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

    Miami and Saint David, UT come to mind. Outside the US though, lots of the Balkan major cities are much less liberal than western cities.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Miami is purple at least. The old guard Cubans are Republicans, the last governor race not so representative. St. George in Utah is really nice, though maybe a town more than a city.

    Tampa is nice but all of our potentially fixable problems are from the conservative outlying areas, as so much of the government is county not city. it would be much nicer with more money going to transit in particular.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I spent 3 weeks in Thonotosassa in 2015, and Jesus Christ was downtown Tampa sad. It just was devoid of any culture or any reason to be down there. The Columbia Restaurant and Ybor City walk was fire though and made up for it a little bit; it just wasn’t enough to make up for the rest of the city being dreary.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Well yes, it has come a long way in the past few years. I used to get so mad because we are a better city to live in but St. Pete's downtown knocked it out of the park, absolute gem of a downtown and ours sucked.

    But ours has gotten so much livelier, it's not just the Tampa Theater and convention center and the Hub, there are a bunch of apartments downtown, the kids of the Columbia people opened a really good restaurant, the city built a much better Riverwalk, there are people out in the nights, concerts, events, it's completely different.

    BTW, when I was growing up we would go downtown on the weekend and it was an absolute ghost town, we wandered the empty streets and made up stories about the buildings. And you could buy houses in Tampa Heights for almost nothing, now they are millions of dollars.

    Thonotasassa still sucks

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Miami only recently turned right wing.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Miami was never liberal. It was always a sort of libertarian with certain key issues like anti communism, pro masculinity, pro protectionism, pro small government. We saw them swing right in 2024, but if those were major issues in past elections, we would’ve seen a red Miami sooner. Miami is full of people that have an attitude problem imho.

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