Project description
A closer look at the rural-urban political divide
Urban-rural divides are large and growing, particularly around elections. While those residing in the countryside tend to lean conservative, urban residents are generally more progressive in their views, particularly on contentious issues such as immigration and climate change. The ERC-funded BRIDGE project aims to investigate the causes of the political divide. It will investigate the role of early-life environmental factors and social interactions in different communities. Using a transdisciplinary approach, the project will apply causal inference methods to longitudinal surveys, analyse big data from social networks such as Facebook, and conduct randomised controlled trials alongside qualitative fieldwork. It will develop strategies to address polarisation and establish a global research network to better understand urban-rural divides.
Objective
Polarisation between urban and rural areas is a key societal cleavage. Existing research finds that rural populations often hold more conservative views, while urban residents are generally associated with progressive positions on issues such as immigration, cosmopolitanism, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. Urban populations are also more likely to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change and support decarbonisation policies. However, critical questions about the causes and consequences of this observed divide remain unresolved.
Is this division primarily attributable to compositional effects, that is, the uneven distribution of people with different demographic characteristics like education, age, and gender? Or does the context of place itself influence the formation of social, cultural, and political outlooks? If the latter, what place characteristics and specific mechanisms drive this contextual effect? Moreover, what strategies might mitigate the growing urban-rural divide, especially on contentious and highly topical issues such as migration, gender rights, and climate policy? By answering these questions, the BRIDGE project will significantly advance our understanding of urban-rural societal polarisation.
BRIDGE innovatively asserts that urban-rural outlook polarisation originates from early-life environmental influences on individuals and is primarily shaped by the scale, density, distance, and diversity of social interactions in different settlements. Its signature transdisciplinary empirical approach will leverage causal inference research methods on longitudinal surveys tracking persons over the life course and Big Data from social networks such as Facebook, along with randomised controlled trials and in-depth qualitative fieldwork. The project will develop evidence-based strategies to mitigate polarisation on divisive topics and establish a global transdisciplinary research network to advance a comprehensive understanding of urban-rural divides.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
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