Looks like we Americans might be having our first urban president

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Good piece in the Washington Post about this today. The US became a predominantly urban nation in the 1920s, but we've never had a president who was the product of a city. Theodore Roosevelt remains the only president born in a major metropolis, but NYC didn't shape him as much as his time in the West and Cuba. Kennedy is thought of as a Bostonian, but is really a product of the suburbs and the Cape.

So if -- if, you hear me Guynemer? I said "if" -- if Obama is elected, he'll be the first US president for whom city life is normal, rather than something that other people live through. We'll finally have a president who might think of cities as the "real America," and who won't be awash in insipid nostalgia for small towns, let alone farms and ranches.

Frankly, I'd find that refreshing, to say nothing of long-overdue.

Anyway, good article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102302480.html

[KrazyHorse]

Stadtluft macht frei.

[Darius871]

Wasn't he brought up in suburban Honolulu, Indonesia for a few years, and then suburban Honolulu again? He wasn't living a very metropolitan lifestyle until going to Columbia IIUC. Hell, JFK's two years in the northern Bronx were more "urban" than anything this guy experienced before 18.

[Guynemer]

Re: Looks like we Americans might be having our first urban president

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
So if -- if, you hear me Guynemer? I said "if" -- if Obama is elected,

[KrazyHorse]

According to his Wikipedia page:

1) The schools he attended in Indonesia were in Jakarta, which is a pretty big city.
2) When he got back to Honlulu he went to a school which (from Google Maps) looks like it's pretty urban (at least compared to the rest of Honolulu; note that it was urban enough for Barry to get into coke...).
3) He then went to Occidental College, which is in LA
4) Columbia Univ.
5) Harvard
6) U Chicago and inner-city Chicago

[Darius871]

I didn't know anything during or after college counts. Lots of presidents move somewhere more urban later in adult life.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm not sure how many of them stayed in the city after college.

My feeling is that anybody who's lived and worked in Chicago for 20 years is pretty much as urbanite as you can get.

[MrFun]

I'm confused with the word "might" in the thread title.

[Swissy]

Not "inner-city". The area he represented in the state senate was made up of the lakefront neighborhoods south of The Loop (downtown). Mostly upper middle class and above, it is far from the real inner city areas. It has more in common with older suburban areas around Chicago; similar population density, income levels and crime levels.

[Colonâ„¢]

Re: Looks like we Americans might be having our first urban president

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Good piece in the Washington Post about this today. The US became a predominantly urban nation in the 1920s, but we've never had a president who was the product of a city. Theodore Roosevelt remains the only president born in a major metropolis, but NYC didn't shape him as much as his time in the West and Cuba. Kennedy is thought of as a Bostonian, but is really a product of the suburbs and the Cape.

"Urbanization level" implies suburbs as well (otherwise the US gets nowhere near 80%).

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Swissy
Not "inner-city". The area he represented in the state senate was made up of the lakefront neighborhoods south of The Loop (downtown).

I was under the impression that his district was a deliberate gerrymander of that lakefront area as well as some inner-city areas. This played to his strengths...

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


I'm with Guy. If you jinx this, I will personally come up to Silver Spring on Nov. 5, drag you to Anacostia, and leave you there wearing nothing but a McCain/Palin t-shirt. Just so we're clear.

[Barnabas]

Why do you people consider the suburbs of the city and the main city to be so different?
I imagine a lot of the people who live in the suburbs work in the city, they just have their houses in the suburbs.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Barnabas
Why do you people consider the suburbs of the city and the main city to be so different?
I imagine a lot of the people who live in the suburbs work in the city, they just have their houses in the suburbs.

That's not nearly as true in the US as it once was; it's easier and easier these days for suburbanites to never venture into their suburb's city, for any reason.

And suburbs are hugely different from cities, in ways that could directly effect someone's policy views. Cities are more violent, but also have greater diversity (including social class diversity), more public transit, and more publicly-supported cultural institutions than do suburbs. Living in a city definitely changes your view of the world.

@ Lancer - I said 'if"! "If," dammit!

[Swissy]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


I was under the impression that his district was a deliberate gerrymander of that lakefront area as well as some inner-city areas. This played to his strengths...

No, all the gerrymandering was done around the outer edges of the city. On the southside it mixed middle-class areas black, consisting of mostly city workers(firemen/police/sanitation) who had to live in the city, with older democratic and newer republican suburbs. The inner city areas are in fact some of the most compact districts and almost match the Chicago city wards in boundaries. The last re-districting was a democratic map, approved by the democratic state supreme court chief. The main purpose was to dilute suburban republican areas with democratic city/surburban areas. IIRC it took the state senate from a two vote republican majority to a three vote democratic. My area got a new democrat state senator, while our old republican one was forced to run against an incumbant republican in a neighboring district.