people don`t make cities liberal – cities make people liberal
Nearly every large city has its underprivileged district(s), where crimes, drugs and racism dominate the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Although these areas are often controlled by gangs and avoided by the police, they help to create the image of the whole city. More frequently than one might think, the people, who rule the districts, are immigrants or descendants of immigrants and feel excluded by the society and left out by the government. Also tensions with the police, for example in every big city in the USA or also in Banlieue, France, contribute to a worse togetherness in the cities.
Another issue is that the political and social point of view depends a lot on the educational level and the personal economic situation. People who are less educated or quite school without a degree tend to have a more extreme opinion on several topics. Due to the fact that in the cities people from all backgrounds – also on different educational levels – come together, likewise different approaches collide which can lead to stress. A lot of people move to the large cities to find a job, concurrent, the unemployment rate in the metropolises in way higher than in the countryside. In addition, more poor people live in the cities. Individuals, who are unhappy with their current situation, tend to vote more extreme parties, which is used by them at campaigns by promising the hopeless and disappointed electors a better life.
Due to the fact that metropolises are more multicultural, as a result of people from different ethnic backgrounds, religions and cultures coming together, than the small towns in the countryside, the citizens of larger cities are “forced” to live next to each other peacefully. Furthermore, especially in cities of over a million habitants it is important that the citizens accept the individual characters, who come in these ‘mega-cities’ together. Consequently, it is important that the people have the right attitude and are willing to tolerate people from different backgrounds and with different sexualities. What happens if the people have the wrong attitude or are not aware of the consequences of their actions, shows the example of Chemnitz, a city in western Germany. Since August 2018, when a 35-year-old citizen of Chemnitz was killed and later on two foreign suspected perpetrators where arrested, a wave of demonstrations against refugees and immigrants evolved. Often these protests were led by groups that were national-socialistic around the edges and surprisingly a lot of people, who said about themselves that they are not Nazis, came to attend these protests. But even if there were counterdemonstrations, the demonstrations led by violent and racist demonstrators dominated – in the streets and the news.
On account of the previously mentioned arguments, I do not agree with Josh Kron`s statement: “people don`t make cities liberal – cities make people liberal”. Personally, I think that the inhabitants of a city shape its image and concurrent the attitude of the other citizens. Furthermore, it is very important how the city is described and portrayed by out standers and the media, because if there is a negative image of the metropolis the people, who live there, either conform to this bad representation or stand up and fight against the prejudices to prove that they are wrong.
