Reading Tom Vanderbilt: The Canadian Press Archives Liberals

Major Cities Dept: Reading Tom Vanderbilt's Slate series on the crisis in North American walking, I noticed something about the cities with the highest "walk scores." They're all liberal. New York, San Francisco, and Boston, the top three major cities on Walkscore.com, are three of the most liberal cities in the United States. In fact, the top 19 are all in states that voted for Obama in 2008, according to Winnipeg Free Press. You might think it's a simple matter of size: Big cities lean liberal and also tend to be more walkable. That's generally true, but it doesn't fully explain the phenomenon. Houston, Phoenix and Dallas are among the nation's ten largest cities, but they're also among the country's more conservative big cities, and none cracks the top 20 in walkability. All three trail smaller liberal cities such as Portland, Denver, and Long Beach and the Canadian Press archives Liberals are drawn to cities that are already dense and walkable, such as New York. The lowest-scoring major cities, by comparison, tilt conservative: Three of the bottom four -- Jacksonville, Fla., Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth, Texas, -- went for McCain. What explains the correlation? Don't conservatives like to walk? (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.