Comparing urban to urban ...

Thomas Edsall asks in his column in today's New York Times, "Will Liberal Cities Leave the Rest of America Behind?"  Edsall writes of

a wave of newly elected mayors from New York to Seattle has taken office committed to deploying the power of city government and aggressive wage and tax policies to attack inequality and revive social and economic mobility. 

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Harold Meyerson, the editor-at-large of The American Prospect, argues in “The Revolt of the Cities” that this insurgency is already in motion. Urban chief executives are raising minimum wages; requiring contractors to hire inner-city residents and to increase pay on municipal projects; backing local union organizing efforts; initiating or expanding pre-K schooling; extending public transit into poor neighborhoods; and requiring police to videotape contacts with citizens.

Edsall's column closes with this paragraph: 

Urban America is now on a reconnaissance mission for progressive politics. What we’re still waiting to find out is whether the policies and programs developed in the nation’s thriving urban core will prove to be broadly applicable. Can the new progressive mayors lay the groundwork for a national agenda, or will bold and innovative policy experiments that privilege New York and Seattle fail their disadvantaged cousins like Stockton, Detroit, Buffalo and Baltimore?

One interesting thing about this column is that is compares cities to other cities but completely ignores  the rural who are implicitly to be left behind--with Detroit and Stockton.