Designing the city

Christian Century, June 20, 2001 by Norman B. Bendroth

But the New Urbanist movement has matured and distinguished itself, says Calthorpe, in accenting economic diversity and regionalism. Economic diversity calls for a continuum of housing styles and prices: affordable and pricey, small and spacious, rented and owned, studios and family housing. This means mixing all income groups and races by distributing affordable housing throughout all communities in a given region. In effect, wealthy suburbs would include affordable housing, and urban neighborhoods would house middle-class families. This tenet implies no more warehousing of the poor in the inner city and no more public housing projects in low-income neighborhoods. It calls instead for inclusionary zoning in the suburbs and scattered-site development of affordable housing throughout a region.

The notion of regional design has been out of fashion since Daniel Burnham's Chicago plan of the 1930s, but it is beginning to make a comeback in light of 21st-century exigencies of smog, sprawl and suburban ennui. The "Charter of the New Urbanism" describes the metropolitan region as "multiple centers that are cities, towns and villages, each with its own identifiable center and edges." A metropolis is a finite area with geographic boundaries defined by topography, watersheds, coastlines, farmlands, regional parks and river basins, otherwise seen as a connected corridor of human and natural habitation. Calthorpe argues that without attention to regional shaping tools such as urban growth boundaries, transit systems and designated urban centers, even well-designed development can flop. Without the constraints of housing diversity within neighborhoods and a regional design that navigates new investments, "the question of where new development should happen and who can afford it remains unanswered."

THE NOTION that there is an ideal scale and shape of human community conducive to human flourishing invites theological reflection. It is linked to the biblical vision that the human community should be a likeness, however dim, of the City of God. At the root of Hebrew and Christian definitions of community is the idea of covenant. In this covenant, human beings bind themselves to God and one another, promising to make and keep obligations for the greater good of the community, not just for themselves. For this community to succeed requires self-restraint and the ability to say no to oneself for the sake of the common good. It also requires a reference point beyond the self--God, a higher good, an ideal--something that motivates self-denial and makes it worthwhile.

At the same time individual liberty cannot be so subordinated that all uniqueness is diminished. The success of communities requires balancing the human need for communal belonging and the need for individual freedom. It also requires a realistic assessment of human nature. The Christian vision reminds us that we should not become too sanguine about efforts to create the good society, nor should we be so skeptical as to never make the attempt.