
In Praise of “Solid B" Cities with Halina Bennet
From Blue City Blues by David Hyde, Sandeep Kaushik
April 8, 2026 · 47 min · Season 2 · Episode 12
About this episode
The episode discusses the contrast between major urban centers and rural areas in America, featuring insights from guest Halina Bennet.
There are the superstar cities that act as the seedbeds of American cultural cosmopolitanism and the great engines of blue America's knowledge economy: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle etc. These are the cities that we obsess over and that typically provide the grist for this podcast. And countering them, of course, is the red America of small towns and rural areas that powered the rise of Trump and MAGA. Both the urban powerhouses and the rural heartland receive more th...
People in this episode
Hosts: David Hyde, Sandeep Kaushik
Guest: Halina Bennet
Topics covered
- urban powerhouses
- rural heartland
- cultural cosmopolitanism
- knowledge economy
- political divide
Keywords
- solid B cities
- urban vs rural
- cultural cosmopolitanism
- knowledge economy
- politics
Mentioned in this episode
Places: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Trump, MAGA
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