Strengthening democracy requires bridging the rural-urban divide. Polarization isn’t just ideological. It’s geographic. Urban and rural communities are deeply divided on a host of policy issues and partisanship, both in the US and globally. While these divides are deep, they are not natural – data show that geographic polarization only emerged in the 1990s and has deepened over the past generation. This suggests that while troubling, the divide isn’t necessarily permanent.
This event will convene over 100 senior scholars, elected officials, political party leaders, and public policy practitioners from democracy and urban/rural think tanks, associations, and nonprofits on the topic “What can depolarize rural/urban politics?”
