Yeah, the question is "do cities attract people high on the 'openness to experience' spectrum, or do they make people that way". I don't think we can know for sure, but I suspect there is a little of both going on.

I'm reluctant to be a complete relativist about these things, even though I recognize that I'm biased. The fact is that a demogogue who wants to drive a wedge of fear between people (no need to state who I'm talking about) has a much harder time doing it in cities. All perspectives arent equal in this respect - some perspectives are based on ignorance and fear, and some are based on the actual experience of interacting with the kinds of people we're supposed to be afraid of.

All due respect, but it's hubris to conflate an affection for the urban lifestyle with being "high on the 'openness to experience' spectrum". There was even a story on HN just in the last few days exploring the biases in the research used to support that notion.

As to the high correlation between population density and political affiliation, I don't see that as being particularly mysterious, even if it is a complex topic. And having recently hosted a fundraiser for a prominent progressive candidate I can attest that fear is being effectively employed across the entire electorate.

Maybe. I suppose I've never questioned my assumption that you're more likely to find people high on the openness to experience scale in urban environments than rural. It's intuitively true to me, and it is the case that cities are more liberal, and "openness to experience" is generally seen as a common personality trait among liberal people, with the more liberal the person the higher on the scale they tend to sit. I'm not a psychologist or anything, so that's very possibly wrong, or "hubris" on my part. I'm too lazy to do actual research on this right now, but the geography section of this Wikipedia article seems to indicate a correlation with that personality trait and more urban states: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

Agreed, and I have the same intuition. The research I mentioned seems to indicate that the questions being asked to gauge openness (among other things) were in fact biased, that's all.

Huh? The cherry picking goes both ways I guess. For those places where people actually live in NYC, you’ll find parks and even parking, sidewalk cafes, cleanish air, beaches, even deer, etc... it seems scary to those who only visit, but it is completely livable to those that actually live there.

NYC is much larger than Manhattan.

And you can even find all those in Manhattan (well maybe not the benches).