In keeping with the urban theory reading self-guided reading course I'm doing, I thought I'd take a brief sidestep here for a bit of theological take on the topic. It is Sunday after all...

A few years back I read a book on the theology of the built environment by T.J. Gorringe. It's worth noting that my interest in urbanism in large part came from my mdiv where I was taught to see theology as a contextual project, not something that just exists outside of time and space. Not only that, but my professor (and the founder of the particular program I took, Donald Goertz, always said that the bible was primarily urban in nature. Anyways, as a part of one of my directed reading courses, I read this particular book and I thought it might be nice to just share a thought from it today that also builds off Mumford's work on the origin of cities.

Gorringe here is riffing off Mumford and considering how cities do or do not participate in the economy of redemption, that is, creating something that lasts for the betterment of the world.

"If Mumford is right, the Hellenistic city effectively built to celebrate its own achievements, as did Imperial Rome. This ought to be a warning to us, for today we wander about in their ruins. For what gave a new lease of life to Rome was Christianity without which, at several points in the past two millennia, it would probably not have survived. Cities necessarily have markets; they are centres of the arts and of innovation. But without a creative spirituality, a sense of transcendent purpose, they die."

I've always kind of liked the idea that cities have a soul, so to speak, and like people, that soul can be nurtured or starved. I think this puts it in an interesting framing, calling it a transcendent purpose. Going back a few days to what I was reflecting on with Mumford in the way that cities began as spaces for ritual and memory, I think it's interesting to consider what gives a city that spark. We sort of intuitively know when we visit a city that has it. It feels alive and exciting. It might also be why suburban sprawl can feel so soulless, they lack a transcendent purpose.

'Walkability' can be a bit of a moving target.

On the one hand, my community ranks near the bottom of Ontario cities walkability scores (13/100). On the other, I've always been okay walking further than what most people would consider convenient. I think anything under 3km is a completely reasonable distance to walk to something. That said, I'm relatively healthy and able bodied. I'm not pushing a stroller and my kids are old enough to ride their own bikes. So my version of walkable is certainly not applicable to everyone.

This is where I find something like Jeff Speck's theory of walkability helpful. Rather than focus on distance, he points to four key conditions: a walk should be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. Importantly, these conditions should be able to be felt by everyone, regardless of age, need, or ability. Imagine if cities began with this sort of mandate for planning. Instead of walking being an afterthought or given the bare minimum of attention, let's make it the starting point for how we think about movement in our cities.

After all, it's not only good for our health and wellbeing, it's also directly related to increased property values and attracting and retaining young families.

"Urban ugliness is often a by-product of municipal structures and utilities that were built with function, not people, in mind."

— Janette Sadik-Khan, Street Fight.

It's wild to me how radicalized I have become around the concept of what a street can be.

For a long time, this was not something I ever thought about. I just assumed the way streets were designed was the only way the could be. I barely questioned it because it served my primary purpose, getting me around efficiently in my car. At some point in my late twenties, something changed. I think I just got tired of driving everywhere. I found being behind the wheel of a car stressful and so I decided to try other ways of getting around. The more I walked and tried out the different transit options, the more attuned I became to how poorly designed it all was for anyone who wasn't in a car.

I believe if you want to understand where you live, you have to walk it. You have to experience what movement through your community is like when you're not in a car. Pay attention to how safe or unsafe you feel in certain areas. How easy is it to get from one place to another?

Something I'm now beginning to pay more attention to is how space is allocated and recognizing that it doesn't have to be this way.

One of my favourite newsletters shared this really interesting article this week. It's almost hard to define exactly what it's about, as it hits on many different fascinating ideas; but at its core it seems to be looking at our relationship to time and hurry. There's so many great things in this article that I would recommend taking some time to read it in full. But what I want to pause and reflect on here is when he talks about the way certain innovations in time saving or efficiency can move from being a good option to becoming a cultural obligation. He uses something like parking apps or self-checkout lanes as an example.

"We welcome the technology at first because it presents us with a choice. But then everybody else has to adopt the technology, and we suddenly realize we’re worse off than we were when we started... And when behaviours become universal, they affect everybody."

I think this is a great point and I was particularly interested in how he took this idea and applied it to the behaviour of people using their phones to record concerts. I'm not sure if you've been to a concert lately, but this trend has become so big that it has become a normalized part of the experience. The author makes the observation that even if you don't want to participate in this shared behaviour, everyone else doing it can ruin the concert experience for you. He even notes that the people most affected are the performers themselves, who now have to perform for an online audience rather than just the people in attendance. It's no longer an option, it's an obligation.

"When one person does something, it’s an option. It’s something that somebody does. When these things become more widespread, they morph from being alternative options to being social norms, conventions from which you have no escape."

This is something I find myself reflecting on often as it relates to the public realm. Public space lives in this strange middle ground of belonging to no one and everyone simultaneously. As such, it is always vulnerable to the shifting norms and expectations of society. A lack of intentional reflection on those behaviours can result in our public spaces being hijacked by them in a way that actively destroys the value that public space should bring.

Perhaps one of the greatest sins of this modern era is the way we have let technology into our lives without intention or consideration of what we are giving up.

Caught an old podcast interview on the weekend with Jennifer Keesmaat in which she made an interesting comment that connects to what I was reflecting on the other day.

She was talking about the social contract in Holland in which people were willing to forego larger personal spaces in exchange for higher quality and more accessible public spaces. People have less need for larger backyards when they have lots of parks and multi-use paths around them. She also contrasted this with the way in which larger private space is seen as a status symbol here in Canada; a larger home is indicative of moving up the social ladder. Yet she recalls family members in Holland living their whole lives in modest row houses, something here we would likely call a starter home.

The key piece here is that achieving this sort of standard of living requires a value or mindset shift from all of us. We need to see a thriving public realm as a worthy trade off; but it also requires investment. It's not enough to just carve off some land and then leave it. Vibrant public spaces need resourcing and creativity in order for them to bring the sort of joy that makes them worth it.