Seattle, Portland and Austin haven't had the same industrial decline as Cleveland, St Louis or Birmingham. The latter cities are highly segregated. So even if they were meccas for young progressives, it would not automatically indicate high integration. Generally, the trend seems to be the more heavily industrialized the city was (including NYC) the more segregated. The fate of industrial cities was pretty much sealed decades ago and whether they are considered progressive or not in the future will probably end up being a consequence rather than a cause of their ability to revive themselves economically. The same was true of D.C.
Also, to go along with the topic of integration, so-called "progressive" cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are well above the national average for multiracial population proportions.
Out of a national total population of 7.0 million Americans who identify themselves as multiracial, 37% of that population lives in the Western United States, where many of the cities the author of this article calls "too white" are, making it by far the most multiracial region of the United States in terms of proportion of population.
Considering how fundamental racial integration is to progressive thought, I would say that would make alot of these places quite progressive. If I used the same logic as the author here uses, I could very well conclude that, based on the research I gathered, that a lot of these "college educated white progressives" are moving to these places where interracial relationships are not stigmatized like they are in other parts of the country.
Just saying.
