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Moving beyond the urban/rural cleavage: Measuring values and policy preferences across residential zones in Canada

ABSTRACT Despite urban forms becoming more varied, analysts continue to use a dichotomous urban/rural distinction when examining political attitudes. Using geocoding, our analysis of original survey data adopts a four-residential-zone approach to exploring Canadian political values and policy preferences: inner city, suburban, small urban, and rural. We find that an ideological polarization between inner city residents on the left and the rest of Canadians on the right emerges and is most pronounced when it comes to values related to new ideology and policy preferences concerning taxation, moral policies, and spending on social assistance. Within large urban centers specifically, suburbanites are more socially conservative than are inner city residents, while divisions between the two groups are smaller with respect to economic issues and the welfare state. We suggest that researchers should replace the binary category of urban/rural for political analyses with a residential zone approach in order to better capture the complexity of contemporary urbanity.