In his paper “Moral Intuitions and Smart Growth: Why do Liberals and Conservatives View Compact Development so Differently,” Arizona State University professor Paul G. Lewis draws on social psychology to propose another explanation: it’s all about gut-based, emotional responses. ... In one of Lewis’ previous studies, survey respondents in Western states were asked for their preference in four potential trade-offs between urban and suburban development patterns. They answered questions like “would you rather have a small yard and a short commute, or a big yard and a long commute?” or “do you support policies that promote development in existing neighborhoods while preserving undeveloped land, or development on the fringes of urban areas to avoid density?”

Simply being conservative made people 10 percent less likely to supporting urban development. That’s true after controlling for other factors like race and income.

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Lewis explains the inability to attribute the left-right divide over smart growth to typical left-right values to an emerging field of social psychology called “social intuitionism.”

People don’t evaluate their preferences based on a coherent set of political beliefs, or from a core set of values, or by following cues from allies within the political fray.

Rather, decisions come from gut impressions.

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Lewis found that individuals who said they don’t really feel a sense of national pride were much more likely to say they’d like living in a small house with a small yard if it meant having a shorter commute. They likewise preferred mixed-use neighborhoods where they can walk to stores.

People who weren’t particularly religious, meanwhile, were more likely to favor small houses and yards, mixed-use neighborhoods, and “high-density” living.

And people who say they’d happily pay more for groceries if it meant keeping immigrants out of the country were significantly more likely to want to have big yards and houses, and they weren’t as interested as others in living in mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods.

In all, he ran nine regressions on the relationship between individual preferences on development and the proxies for moral intuitions, and seven of them supported his hypothesis that people with conservative moral impulses are more likely to dislike the idea of urban living.