(One of the largest projects that has been done in terms of New Urbanism is in SeaSide Fl, ok so I’m a bit bias for my state’s progressive thinking…)
I recently picked up a book by a New Urbanist author, Global City Blues. I have tell you the first twenty pages were a delight to read. What is new Urbanism you ask? Well wikipedia gives a short definition;
New urbanism is an urban design movement whose popularity increased beginning in the 1980s and early 1990s. The goal of new urbanists is to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning. These include everything from urban retrofits, to suburban infill.
There are some common elements of new urbanist design. New urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs. New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce the time people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl. Many other issues, such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the renovation of brownfield land are also covered in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the movement’s seminal document. Because new urbanist designs include many of the features (like mixed use and emphasis on walkability) which characterized urban areas in the pre-automobile age, the movement is sometimes known as Traditional neighborhood design
As soon as I began to wonder whether any Christian cultural critics had picked up on the topic I came across this book endorsed by Eugene Peterson, written by Eric, New Urbanism and the Sidewalks in the Kingdom.
I haven’t had the time to check this book out from the library yet but I intend to add it to my wishlist. When I think about the imageo dei being interpreted in terms of the communal nature of man reflecting the Trinitarian community I can’t help but think that some of what the New Urbanist are raising in their proposals for new forms of city planing needs to be heeded. The idea that space and location does something to us as people made in the image of God should be something that immediately resonates with our theology of city. That is one of the things in mind that makes gentrification so dangerous as a community dynamic, we are not just depriving the poor of their physical home but by moving them we may be depriving them of their entire self-reference of home. Unfortunately I’ve noticed that many of the examples of New Urbanism i’ve come across would be out of reach of the poor, but the philosophy which drives it is something I’m only just beginning to explore and has already shown signs of promise to myself.
For those of you in Urban Missions I’d love to hear your thoughts on New Urbanism and the role we as Kingdom minded Christians should play in relation to it.
Sets 'n' Service 
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November 27, 2006 at 3:21 am
Mark Traphagen
I have no expertise in New Urbanism, but having grown up in 60s suburban sprawl, where a car became the necessity to do anything, I remember being fascinated as a kid watching Leave It to Beaver by the fact that there were always men in suits and ladies carrying shopping bags walking up and down the sidewalks in Beaver’s neighborhood.
Though my former hometown of Charlottesville was not designed by New Urbanists, it naturally had many of the characteristics you mention. Karyn and I regularly walked or bicycled to most of our shopping and work, as well as to the downtown pedestrian mall (six blocks of the main street closed to motorized traffic. As we moved around that central core, we passed by and through housing of every different economic strata.
November 27, 2006 at 5:03 am
garver
Jacobsen’s book is a good Christian intro to New Urbanist concerns and a fun read. I blogged about it a while ago as I recall, though I can’t find the post now.
November 27, 2006 at 11:50 pm
setsnservice
Mark,
So is Karyn a June kinda wife 🙂
Garver,
If you find the post let me know please.
November 28, 2006 at 2:11 am
Mark Traphagen
June as in June Cleaver? Well about as much as I am a Ward (which is to say that I have never once come home from work and smoked a pipe while I read the paper while Karyn made dinner in white gloves and pearls).
November 28, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Matt Wiebe
I have read this book, and thought a lot about the implications of New Urbanism for missions. My wife is an architecture grad and this became her primary passion. We are not currently engaged in urban missions, but we have a heart to do so in the future. Jacobsen’s book is an excellent introduction with some Christian interpretation, but to get it from the horse’s mouth, you should read Suburban Nation by Duany et al.
Here’s some thoughts:
1) As Duany explains, New Urbanism should be more accessible to the poor, but it isn’t simply because there’s such a demand for quality spaces to live that the price inevitably goes up. This is more the fault of the glut of homogenous, low-quality suburbs than New Urbanism per se.
2) Most poverty-stricken inner city neighborhoods have superior infrastructure (read: sidewalks and good public space) for community compared to the suburbs.
3) One way to prevent gentrification that I’ve seen is to form a neighborhood association that will provide no/low-interest loans to people who wish to buy a house in an area. What good neighborhoods need is a higher amount of homeowners rather than tenants, because they will take ownership of the neighborhood.
4) View the neighborhood as an organism rather than as a collection of autonomous individuals. Ministry-wise, this may lead to a resurrection of thinking of your neighborhood as your parish. You are concerned with more than people who “come to church,” because you and the community of Jesus followers are being the church within the larger community.
5) You have greater opportunity to develop relationships because you can actually bump into people in your neighborhood rather than passing by autonomously encapsulated in your car-bubble.
6) I could go on and on…
November 28, 2006 at 6:30 pm
setsnservice
Matt,
Thank you for the book suggestion and the summary of Duany’s thoughts as they apply to the question. I visited your blog and have decided to add you to my reads. I’m in the worst part of the semester of my final year of MDiv studies, after it passes I’ll check out your reflections in a deeper fashion. Blessings…
November 28, 2006 at 8:30 pm
Matt Wiebe
Cool, hope you find something worthwhile on my blog. I’m glad to see other Christians thinking about New Urbanism.
Just to clarify: probably only the first thought is directly from Duany, and even he is not advocating that New Urbanism is for the poor, he’s just saying that it’s not inherently elitist. The rest are a hodge-podge of ideas gleaned and grown.
And I completely understand heavy school stuff. I’m nearing end of term madness here myself.
November 29, 2006 at 1:30 am
Mark Traphagen
Really appreciated your summary, Matt. You made me think of a couple examples I know of where many of the goals of NU may be happening in already existing environments. The first is back in Charlotteville. Karyn and I lived in a neighborhood-in-transition where young affluent couples were moving in and buying up houses in the midst of older minority residents mostly renting. It looked like classic gentrification forcing out the poor…until a group of families from a local Episcopal church got a vision for the neighborhood. They covenanted to move into the neighborhood, but with each family also committing to buy at least one other house in the neighborhood and, with help from the church, make it available for purchase at affordable terms to the former renters. The neighborhood is now beginning to prosper without losing its multi-ethnic and multi-income level character.
The second is the ongoing story of one of our WTS professors, which I told here.
November 29, 2006 at 1:55 am
Laurence O.
Great thoughts from all . . . and it looks like a great book.
The tension I feel is that I find myself with deep conflicting desires: (a) to be living within the sort of “new urban Christian communities,” i.e. an in-gathering, and (b) to be in the vanguard of the Missio Dei’s worldwide expansion, i.e. an out-sending. My latest soulish wrestling is how to find a tension worth living and dying for . . . do I stay, do I go? If I go, how do I create these types of communities as a goer? If I stay, how do I live within a staying community and remain faithful to the Mission?
It seems to me that verses can be piled up on both sides (be a faithful stayer/be a committed goer), but most people conclude that sacrificial going earns more spiritual badges when its all said and done. Perhaps this is due to the overwhelming amount of motion/going/pilgrimage/wandering/suffering in the Bible’s grand narrative.
Anyhow, any of you in related throes finding wisdom for the journey?
November 29, 2006 at 11:25 am
Mark Traphagen
Just 2 cents worth, Lawrence:
In the spirit of the Internet Monk’s famous essay on “Wretched Urgency,” I would say that there is at lest an implicit argument in the NT is support of “staying” as a viable and holy option: the fact that though the Apostle Paul was frequently on the move, he does not call the people he writes to in his epistles to the same lifestyle. Instead, he encourages them to be radically faithful right where they are–in their families, churches, jobs, etc.
November 29, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Matt Wiebe
Mark, that example of families from the Episcopal church is spot on. And the story of one of your profs is the good stuff too.
Laurence: My thoughts lately have been that, in a society where “going” non-stop is the norm, Jesus might just be calling us to “stay” to demonstrate that his kingdom does not work like that of the world. There is validity to going, but I think that the world needs “stayers” right now.
May 8, 2007 at 1:14 pm
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[…] New Urbanism And Sidewalks In The Kingdom: “The idea that space and location does something to us as people made in the image of God should be something that immediately resonates with our theology of city … For those of you in Urban Missions I’d love to hear your thoughts on New Urbanism and the role we as Kingdom minded Christians should play in relation to it.” […]