Why can't large urban areas be conservative?

[TJ in Oregon]

Some random economic points to complement the ones already stated, off the top of my head:

It's important to realize how the economics of suburbanization affects politics. We're a suburban country (IIRC, by one measure some 51% of the country lives in areas considered suburban. Don't have the source, as I saw it a while ago). The building of suburban areas supports the automotive, construction, and home supply industries, and all the industries (steel, coal, oil, rubber, plastic, wood, ceramics, parts, etc.) that supply those industries. Suburban sprawl and building out provide quick and easy economic growth and income support in a country where land is plenty, and therefore cheap.

The Republican Party, being the party of business and believing that local governments should be leaders, are naturally going to enact policies that benefit industry (as suburbanization does). The building of the interstate highway system was begun under Eisenhower, after all, for primarily defense purposes but with the secondary benefit of promoting construction of cheap homes (remember, there was a severe housing shortage in the country for much of the late 1940s, and IIRC the early 1950s) and as automotive and other companies made big money, this led to big profits.

Americans are a individualistic bunch and owning land and a home full of nice things is ingrained into our culture. The post-WWI boom combined with wartime shortages to dam up savings to make the economy and the country as a whole ready to finally live out the American Dream of a nice home with a nice lawn with a nice family and a nice car in the suburbs. Cities were crowded, and high land & housing prices meant that you had to live in an apartment or flat if you could'nt afford a stand-alone house. So naturally, people went to the suburbs, driven by their wants but also enabled by government policy.

City housing often dates back to the pre-1940s, so upkeep can get expensive, as can infrastructure costs, so higher taxes are necessary to sustain services. A lot of inner suburbs built before the 1970s have been facing high costs to repair roads, schools, libraries, and utility infrastructure, and these costs resemble urban issues more than newer suburbs that have brand new or relatively new roads, schools, and infrastructure that do not require higher taxes and large, long-term bond issuances. I think that's a big economic factor to inner suburbs shifting Democratic in the 1990s as infrastructure began to show its age, in addition to more affluent minorities moving out of depressed inner cities.

The Republican Party has abandoned cities by virtue of being the party of suburbs and growth, really. There was a time before the 1970s when they and the Democrats focused on cities, suburbs, and rural areas, but as the population has become more suburbanized, that's where the votes lie.

Just let the infrastructure get old and deteriorate, forget about taxes paying for them. It's like a new car, once it gets old and doesn't work anymore, why throw money into it if the costs outweigh the value?

So just abandon all neighborhoods built before the 70s? If we followed that policy we'd either have 40% of the population homeless or the much more expensive task of building houses for close to half our population every 30 years. Pretty soon every major metro area would mostly look like inner city Detroit.

[TJ in Oregon]

And even though Blacks have historically suffered at the hands of White-led discrimination in this country, that doesn't mean that anywhere even close to a significant number hold the same kind of animosity towards Whites that a large number of Whites hold against minorities.

Why are black-on-white murders more common than the reverse, then? Doesn't that contradict the notion that whites are more hostile to blacks than vice versa?

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2014.xls

This sort of thing is a prime example of why racial voting polarization will continue. The discussion quickly degenerates into an argument about who has been wronged by whom and who is currently the most underhanded. It will keep people voting the way they currently are.