Cities

Saving Suburbia: From the Garden to the City

by Mel McGowan

C.S. Lewis imaginatively conveyed the continuity of the Old and New Earth in this passage from The Last Battle:

The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was...

The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more...

‘The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this’...

‘Why!’ exclaimed Peter. ‘It’s England. And that’s the house itself—Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began!’

‘I thought that house had been destroyed,’ said Edmund.

‘So it was,’ said the Faun. ‘But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.’⁸

As an architectural/urban designer, I am a card-carrying member of the Supreme Architect’s fan club. The common thread in design that stands the test of time—that takes into consideration this theology of place in both the Garden and the City—is not traditionalism, functionalism, minimalism, or the avant garde. It is working with, not against God’s architecture, whether it is the natural topography, native ecology, prevailing wind patterns, or solar orientation. We should draw inspiration from, rather than ignore or compete with, his creation. This is true whether the designer acknowledges the authorship of a Creator or not. It is the thread that holds together the local vernacular architecture that inspires a luxury resort in Bali, Mont St Michel, a National Park lodge, the Arts & Crafts movement, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry’s organic structural sculptures, and George Lucas’ depiction of the capital of “Naboo.” Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to find not only works of fine architecture, but also my grandparent’s mountain cabin on the other side of eternity.

This realization has changed everything in my approach to community design and architecture. The idea that a site plan could be prayerfully considered, rather than seen as a simple technical solution or a functional diagram has revolutionized my design philosophy. But what about the average Christian? What does a theology of place have to do with our everyday lives? Everything.

The God of Place did not teach that true spirituality is about eventually escaping this world to some other place in the sky where we will live forever. A Christian should anticipate spending forever here, in a new City of Heaven that comes to a renewed Earth. Rob Bell puts it this way:

Jesus wants his followers to bring heaven, not hell, to earth. This has been God’s intention for people since the beginning... The entire movement of the Bible is of a God who wants to be here, with his people. The church is described later as being the temple of God. And how does the Bible end? With God ‘coming down’ and taking up residence here on earth. The goal isn’t escaping the world but making this world the kind of place God can come to. And God is remaking us into the kind of people who can do this kind of work.⁹

If we take this seriously, does it change the houses that we buy, the neighborhoods we live in, the places we shop, and the products that we consume? Definitely. Perhaps most challenged is our pursuit of the American Dream. Let’s take a closer look.

AUTOPIA

One of the top current television shows is the phenomenon known as American Idol. As people across the country, including many Christians, root for their favorite Idol, two ironies strike me. The obvious irony is the full embrace, even worship, of the show, its participants, and its brand by those who profess a Judeo-Christian faith, in the face of the Second Commandment. The other, more subtle, irony is the obliviousness of our worship of the true American Idol—the suburban American Dream—and the damage it has caused to our lives and the sacredness of place.

A brief survey of history reveals that human ecologies and communities have certain consistencies and patterns that have repeated themselves across space and time. Up until the twentieth century, people throughout history lived in human-scaled environments, defined largely by the radius and distance that a person could walk. Building heights were also limited by the number of stairs a person could comfortably climb. A diversity of uses made it possible to live, work, learn, and play within a reasonable distance of each other, if not on top of each other. Finally, various densities of homes allowed multiple generations of families to live in the same community, if they so chose. Then something fundamentally changed.

A new technology called the internal combustion engine radically transformed the scale of living. For thousands of years, a twenty-minute commute meant a one-mile radius for most, which was the characteristic size of some of the largest cities. The car created a new regional scale in which people could live, work, and play twenty miles or more from each destination. At the same time and partly as a result, Modernism took root in both architecture and community planning, united by the dictum that “form follows function.” Many of the first generation European Modern architects took this as an opportunity to rid architecture of its potential to communicate the values, culture, and faith of a community. Since many felt that religion was an “opium of the masses,” they stripped buildings of the gargoyles, buttresses, and iconography. The reason that this movement flourished had less to do with the public adoptions of this anti-theology and more to do with the fact that it took much less skill, cost, and time to produce “functional boxes.” The real damage was done by Modernist planners whose functionalist approach led to zoning, in which a community is broken up into specific functional zones: residential (of various densities), retail, office park, industrial, etc. The combination of the automobile and new Modernism was a death knell to human-scaled community.

This combination, however, proved a potent facilitator of a new American Dream. For the first time in human history, the “city” (regardless of scale) was no longer viewed as the proper and safe container of community. “Downtown” became synonymous with the “Central Business District” (CBD) as a result of single use functional zoning. Urban design evolved with the City Beautiful movement and almost a sole focus on creating grand civic and governmental centers. Once these areas were stripped of homes, schools, and churches, retail departed as well.

Partially in response to the de-humanization of the Industrial Revolution, environmental designers including Andrew Jackson Downing, Frederick Law Olmstead, Ebenezer Howard, and Frank Lloyd Wright began articulating a competing, yet complementary vision to the high-rise urban vision of European architectural modernists. What they effectively argued was that we should “return” to the garden, and create a new suburban landscape. The original “garden city” models of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were promising. They were intricately planned around natural features and emulated the scale and organic feel of a medieval village, with a rich variety of housing types and uses. Many of these communities (e.g., Mariemont, OH; Riverside, IL; Forest Hills Gardens, NY; Country Club District, MO; Beverly Hills, CA) remain some of the most prized communities in the nation. And many were based on a walkable radius to a rail transit station.

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Comments

Gavin Baker

Appreciate you putting this together Mel. I'd agree with your observations that "urban" is trending popular - although as part of the generation that grew up in the suburbs, I long to live somewhere not just with high walkability scores, but in an area that has soul. In a house or area where the trees are older than me and the stories run deep.

Thanks for sharing.

Joel Schuster

Mel, I appreciate your thoughts. I was just having this same conversation over lunch yesterday. Talking with another church leader I was asked my thoughts on some aspects of Church culture that are being developed in our area and the best word I could come up with is "vanilla". In contrast our Church has been talking about the idea of community in relation to the theme of home / peace / rest / feast that you see scattered through out the teaching of Jesus and the broader narrative of scripture. Something in our souls longs for our first home - Eden; where we were in a perfect peaceful relationship with God and there was rest, true rest that is felt to the deepest part of our soul because all is as it was meant to be. It is the ideal in the story of the prodigal, both sons at home both in the feast celebrating as a family together is what the Father ultimately wants. The challenge for the modern day Church is just that, finding home, that true sense of community that has somehow gotten lost along the way.

We are in true suburbia just outside of Philly and are wrestling with this exact issue. People travel from miles around yet they have no connection or ownership to their community, they don't really know their neighbor, and frankly I think we may have lost the ability to even know how to truly connect anymore.

Thanks for your thoughts, there is a lot to think about here.

Steve Fridsma

Great thoughts Mel. I wonder about your living situation now - you say you used to live this way. What did you switch into?

We are blessed to live where our kids can play in the street with their neighborhood friends, and we can walk 4 minutes to public transportation, pharmacy, convenience store, video store, coffeeshop, pizza place, dry cleaner, and a salon. Several families on our street share tools and other equipment and help out on projects, pet-sitting, house-sitting, and occassionally get together for meals. Our street has great community, and sometimes an evening conversation in the street will involve four families and at least 3 dogs! All this, and our lot borders an 80-acre nature preserve, so we are blessed with both community and creation. I watched a family of deer walk through my wooded, unmowed backyard moments ago.

A few other thoughts: Technology has not only challenged the need for physical spaces for gathering and discource but has also permitted us to become incredibly rude. People will say things through the computer that they would never say to anyone's face, let alone friends or colleagues. It is far too easy to criticize, judge, over-generalize, condemn, accuse, and mis-characterize people or their positions, even fellow Chrisitans, through online communication. People are much more willing to launch grenades when they cannot see the faces of those they are potentially devastating.

As a designer, I also very much admire the intentionality of the Disney theme parks, for what they set out to do. They are triumphant examples of multi-disciplinary collaboration and adherence to story-telling and design principles all with users in mind. They seek to be as inclusive as possible, and generally succeed. I've had wonderful family vacations here.

Still, I personally find them a bit stifling and prescriptive. There are plenty of common tropes at Disney as well, i.e. the ride is breaking or something "malfunctioned" or "we're going down the wrong track" but that becomes part of the experience. After a few days there, I must confess that my soul craves going wilderness backpacking like never before. I'd like to hope that there was at least a little chaos and wildness to the natural beauty of Eden.

Mike Haggerty

Excellent article. Well researched, well written. I have thought many of these same things since returning to suburbia after spending a week in Paris and The Hague, NL last spring.

The Dutch, by the way, seem to excel in the art of building in harmony with nature (e.g. windmills, canals, bicycles, 4 story buildings). Perhaps a latent impact of the Dutch Reformed Church?

This article makes me want to convert the bottom floor of my 1920's era foursquare into a pub and move our living quarters upstairs. There, neighbors could gather and talk about these very things over a pint of brew. But, alas, the city zoning and state ABC laws forbid that.

David Mercer

So how is that we can connect in this digital age. Some kids may never leave their room. How do we share? I go to the local gym, attend a mens group supporting mental health and visit my medical centre where I hope to bring some cheer.

I am getting a taxi licence so I can earn a living and talk to people face to face. I like to teach kids as a substitute teacher but that has got limits as the political correctness is skyrocketing.

Every one likes to wear a busy badge and no one has time. Well the floods in Australia has drawn out the community spirit and neigbours helping neigbours, strangers helping others and whole towns pitching in to clear up the mess. Only trouble is the mediadoes not attribute any of this to God. We need to rely onHIM and give him the glory more

David

Brenda Mantel

Thank you for this article, after a career in urban and regional planning, working on Master Planned communities and city redevelopment projects; I too had a sense that the American landscape in the 'American Pie' sense leaves little room for sacred space.

However this next generation of designers because of the forced retirement of the baby-boomer developers, will be creating much more thoughtful spaces. Part of the whole movement of greener development is creating a new character and a more desirable use... and I believe a more soulful response is in the near future. They understand that it takes more than a big box retail center to create community.

What attracts me to this line of work is the way the built environment creates a response in behavior. But I think the trap in creating spaces is assuming that every city and neighborhood would respond to the design in the same manner. I would suggest that the reason for planned communities is because there is a population that thrives in this environment. I would also suggest that the reason for historic urban communities is because there is a population that thrives in that environment as well.

Each of these types of neighborhoods then dictate what form of sacred space will be created or generated. So looking for an archetype that fits all or that would assume be the 'right' or most functional, leaves the process of thoughtful design out of the picture.

But I agree, God did hard-wire us for community and I believe that's why there are a variety of communities out there, it reflects the unique qualities we all contain. Also, when talking about this subject is good to bear in mind all the elements which affect our American communities and their functions, i.e. politics, economics, natural disasters, transportation and other transient affects which leaves its imprint.

Tyler Stephens, AIA

Your time and knowledge of this subject is greatly appreciated. As a fellow architect and life-long Christian, I have been communicating this same message in my local sphere of influence for years. You have stated it much better than I, and I appreciate the backup you have provided. I only wish we could be discussing this in person (in real community) rather than across a computer screen.

I also feel that God really wanted me to read this now as my wife and I have recently been painfully considering leaving the city life we love in order to escape a recent rise in crime, and education costs for our children. It has not felt right to leave, but we are tired. Thank you for the encouragement.

Howard Freeman

Really liked this piece. I especially liked the line, "I believe that God is calling Christians today to redeem and restore sustainable Christ-centered community back to the heart of our communities..."

Thanks for contributing it.

fgdds

Its not the case that reader must be completely agreed with author's views about article. So this is what happened with me, anyways its a good effort, I appreciate it. Thanks

Comments are now closed

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