Asymmetries in Urban, Suburban, and Rural Place-Based Resentment

Abstract

This paper investigates the size, socio-demographic correlates, and political implications of place-based resentment in urban, suburban, and rural areas, with a particular focus on similarities and differences in high-resentment individuals across place types. We focus on three research questions. First, we ask how place resentment varies across all possible combinations of urban, suburban, and rural in-groups and out-groups. Second, we explore if high-resentment individuals in urban, suburban, and rural areas share similar socio-demographic and political characteristics. Finally, we investigate how citizens' satisfaction with their elected representatives, and positions on contentious and important policy issues, are related to place-based resentment. We investigate these questions using two large-scale surveys of the Canadian public. We find that place-based resentment is highly asymmetric: resentment is strongest among rural residents regardless of the target (suburban or urban) of their resentment, whereas urban and suburban residents tend to resent each other more than either group resents rural areas. We also find substantial asymmetries in the correlates and political implications of place resentment. Our findings suggest that place resentment is an important and politically consequential phenomenon across all place types, but also that the character and strength of this resentment is quite different in rural, suburban, and urban places.

Geographical Tensions Within Municipalities? Evidence from Swedish Local Governments☆

“…Using two different datasets, we found small but significant signs of differences regarding the input side of politics, where citizens in centralort are more satisfied with democracy than those residing outside the center. Stressing the importance of distinguishing "peripheries" from "rural areas" (e.g., Auerbach et al 2022;de Lange et al 2022)-and in line with Borwein and Lucas's (2022) finding that resentment tends to be strongest among rural residents-we found that those living in more rural areas were the most dissatisfied citizens. Additionally, we found that non-center inhabitants differ in what political issues they perceive to be important and salient.…”

“…Rural areas, however, are defined by the density of their population and are typically associated with economic hardships compared with more urban centers, as well as suffering from shrinking populations (Ford and Jennings 2020). Interestingly, to date, several findings indicate that place‐based resentment is stronger among residents in rural districts (e.g., Borwein and Lucas 2022; Munis 2020). As argued by both Auerbach et al (2022) and de Lange et al (2022), the sources of discontent in peripheral settlements, on the one hand, and rural ones, on the other hand, may have quite different roots.…”

Municipal Political Representation and Housing Affordability

“…Beyond the pocketbook, people might mobilize to oppose a new housing project because the project threatens their place. This is primordial as the attachment that individuals have with their place is well documented (Low and Altman, 1992;Borwein and Lucas, 2023a;Brown, Perkins and Brown, 2003;Munis, 2021) and instills a collective sense of identity (Thoits and Virshup, 1997). Research has also shown that the effects of place are asymmetric among urban/rural residents (Borwein and Lucas, 2023b;Jacobs and Munis, 2019) and these individuals seek to protect their place from change or perceived destruction (Ancell and Thompson-Fawcett, 2008;Devine-Wright, 2009;Einstein, Glick and Palmer, 2020;Talen, 2001).…”

Urban-Rural Policy Disagreement in Canada, 2000-Present

“…This research tradition emphasizes that "urban" and "rural" are meaningful social identities for many people. Urban and rural residents often express strong attachments to their communities, which means that cultural or economic changes that reshape the relative prestige or power of urban and rural places can fuel a politics of political resentment as rural residents perceive that their communities are economically under-resourced, culturally disregarded, and politically under-represented (Borwein and Lucas, 2023;Munis, 2021;Rodriguez-Pose, 2018;Trujillo and Crowley, 2022). In this research, urban and rural voters are understood to be socially polarized -divided as much or more by their social identities and negative affect toward place-based out-groups than by fundamental differences in policy attitudes (for a discussion of social polarization, see Mason, 2018).…”

“…Economically, deep changes to advanced industrial economies in recent decades, especially globalization and the advantages of agglomeration in the new knowledge economy, have created politically consequential spatial patterns of "have" and "have-not" places (Ford and Jennings, 2020;Rodriguez-Pose, 2018). Socially, urban-rural divisions in many countries appear to be reinforced by a strong sense of place attachment and a heightened sense of placebased resentment among rural voters in particular, who perceive that their communities are deprived or overlooked by urban elites (Borwein and Lucas, 2023;Cramer, 2016;Munis, 2020;Trujillo and Crowley, 2022). Finally, in political terms, strategic appeals by elites to urban and rural issues and identities may have also heightened and activated urban-rural political cleavages (Armstrong, Lucas and Taylor, 2022;Ogorzalek, 2018;Taylor et al, Forthcoming).…”