Blue City Blues
Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.
America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party.
But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.
The Blue City Blues podcast aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them?
Blue City Blues
Did Blue City America Get Covid Wrong, Too?
This week we take a look back at the COVID-19 pandemic with Steven Macedo, a professor of politics at Princeton University and co-author of "In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us" (Princeton University Press). The book offers a self-critical examination of how blue leaders and institutions in government, academia, science and the media navigated the unprecedented crisis.
Macedo makes a provocative argument: that cosmopolitan elites, influenced by political divides and class blindness, made some significant mistakes in pandemic response. The conversation highlights a lack of public debate surrounding the trade-offs inherent in lockdown measures, school closures, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions. We also discuss the economic and social costs, disproportionately borne by low-income and minority communities.
The episode was taped live before an audience at Seattle University at the invitation of Seattle University President Eduardo M. Peñalver (a fan of the pod!) as part of his presidential speaker series, which brings nationally known speakers to Seattle to discuss issues related to freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity and campus culture.
Our editor is Quinn Waller.
Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com
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