Economy
The Geography of Populist Discontent
“There are times when rational, well-educated societies lose a sense of perspective,” says urban scholar Josef Konvitz. The global populist backlash represents one of those times.
Donald Trump in America, Rob Ford in Canada, Brexit in the U.K., and (maybe) Marine Le Pen in France—as I wrote on Tuesday, populism is tied to a cultural backlash reinforced by our increasingly uneven geography. These growing divides generate the anger and backlash that translates into backward-looking, reactionary populist politics.
The economic strategies of populists are territorial: walls, immigration restrictions, and rules based on national origin. But populism’s rise in Europe as well as the United States is less a product of economic inequality per se or even of economic anxiety; it is a cultural backlash against urbanism and the values of openness, globalism, tolerance, and diversity that are the hallmark of great cities.