Do you live in a large metropolitan area, a small city, or a college town? Then odds are you live in the real “blue America.” And, according to these guys over at “The Stranger,” you should be pissed that red, rural and exurban Americans wants to tell you what to do.

The old Democratic alliance of rural populists and urban liberals is broke—the rural populists have left the fold to vote with their culturally conservative cousins. We’re not going to get them back. But we don’t have to. We outnumber them. And if the cities keep growing (as they have), we’ll only outnumber them more.

Democratic values, then, should be wholly urban values. After reading of The Stranger’s article, I came up with a quick list of a dozen things you can do to get your country back for your city:

1. Whatever the scope of your metro area’s public transportation, demand that it be doubled. Or tripled. Ride public transportation whenever you can. If it’s a pain in the ass to do so, raise Cain about it. Be able to tell a short story or two about how your life would be easier with better public transportation. Be concrete and specific.

2. Make a stink about funding for exurban highways and roads. It’s subsidized exurban development—so call it a subsidy. Cultural conservatives hate the thought of their hard earned tax dollars being used to subsidize something for someone else. Set the red staters against each other.

3. Demand clean air. Five or ten (or twenty-five) extra cents a gallon for cleaner gasoline inside the city is worth better respiratory health. Show photos of urban kids suffering from asthma. Better yet: show photos of urban kids who’ve died from asthma. It’s time to steal a page from the dead fetus photo crowd.

4. Pass living wage legislation in your city. You can (just barely) make a living in rural and exurban America on minimum wage. So they can’t be expected to get it. As cities, we can start by taking care of our own. Start small, with city government employees and contractors, if necessary.

5. Pass domestic partnership benefits in your city. How many gay people do you know that have moved from the city to a small town? That’s because precisely the opposite is what happens. Let’s solve this problem in our cities, where the vast majority of gay folks choose to live.

6. Make your city more beautiful. Does the architecture suck? Pass better zoning ordinances. Is it a concrete wasteland? Get some trees planted.

7. If the cities control your state’s politics, skip federal health care reform and take care of it at the state level. It worked for Vermont.

8. Get real local news. If your daily paper’s target audience is the exurbs, demand better urban coverage. Pick up the alternative weekly alternative; if they’re coverage sucks, make demands there too. Better yet, get your local neighborhood paper if there is one. And don’t just read it—write the editor a few times a year. The small neighborhood paper will love you for it, and you’ll become known as a voice of your community. Bitch at your local TV newscasts for making the city look like a never ending murder, arson, and rape spree. Columbine wasn’t in the city.

9. Besides public transportation, make it easier to get around. This means sidewalks, cross walks, speed humps, street lights, and street signs. Bus stops should give route numbers and a short description of routes, at a bare minimum. Why come in to visit the city when you know it’s impossible to find your way around? Exurbanites aren’t stupid. You don’t like to feel lost either.

10. Celebrate your local institutions: museums, colleges, parks, theaters, and clubs. Does your city have a large urban park where, odds are, you can show up any Saturday afternoon and enjoy some or another festival? The exurbs don’t. Does your city have districts where you can just show up and walk from restaurant to live music club to bookstore to cafe? The exurbs don’t. A museum or theater district? The exurbs don’t. There are reasons it costs more to live in a city. Get your money’s worth and talk about it. Make the exurbanites jealous.

11. Go to neighborhood and city meetings. Just two or three a year will do. You’ll be better informed for it. But better yet, you’ll know who the real power brokers are. Introduce yourself. Get to know them. Join their ranks if you’re so inclined, or become a member of their “kitchen cabinet.”

12. Demand population proportional funding of federal benefits and subsidies. Your hard earned tax dollars are being spend to fund pork projects for red staters. Make your Congresscritter see that it’s to their benefit to make noise about this—it makes it look like they’re rooting for the home team, after all. And an urban liberal berating pork barrel spending might just set some red staters off guard.

What did I miss? Any others?