Cities are hubs of commerce, and that's why cities get attacked as centers of vice and decadent pleasures, and why we have a thousand year old proverb that city air breathes free.

Every single moralizing jackass, from every single civilization in all of history, has claimed that the city is a den of vice and decadence, and that the simple traditional virtues of the rustic peasant are better. It was true in Sumeria. It was true in Rome. It was true in China, and it was true in India. It's true in the US, and in Europe, and in Japan, and in the Arab world. I don't know, but if I had to bet I'd bet the Mayans and the Incas said the same freaking thing.

And you want to know why? Because they can't get over the thought that someone, somewhere, might be living differently than the Rules say they should. And commerce, and division of labor, and economic specialization is the #1 way of getting the tools you need to live differently. Commerce is how you get enough people into close proximity that they can form subcultures. If someone is the only gay man in a village of 40 people, you're pretty much screwed. If you then move to a city of 4 million people, then suddenly he's got a usefully big set of people you can potentially screw. Commerce is how you get enough actors and audience in one place that you can run a subversive play and make money at it. Subcultures become self-sustaining when they are large enough for commerce to happen, and that's why moralists hate the city: weirdo subcultures are irrefutable proof that their worldview isn't a universal absolute.

In fact, you can reliably identify prudes of any political persuasion, by looking for how they want to restrict consumer products. Scratch a Republican who wants to censor video games, or a Democrat who wants to ban SUVs, and odds are you've found someone who thinks that individuals' tastes are degenerate and morally wrong, and that he or she knows better -- an authoritarian in the making.