Renewing the City of God

The shape of the built environment invariably reflects and encodes our values. In earlier times, when work was frequently communal, small human settlements often clustered around a shared, open space.  A new book by Ross Chapin  provides an excellent introduction to Pocket Neighborhoods old and new. They are a wonderful alternative,  optimizing for  community and engagement instead of what has become normative, particularly in suburbs, optimizing for privacy and security. They are a step in the direction of Co-housing, but the commitment to a group is less formal. Check out his website. It is not that what he is doing is new. By his own admission, it hearkens back to a way of building that was once familiar, during the pre-World War II era.  It’s just that he has done a fantastic job of explaining pocket neighborhoods and their many virtues.

At various points in history, humanity has undergone a radical shift in perspective, famously including the shifting of the center of the cosmos from the Earth to the Sun, the Darwinian inversion of the top-down “Great Chain of Being” idea to one of bottom-up evolution, the shattering of local scale with the coming of the railroads in the 19th Century.  The Revelation of Bahá’u'lláh aims at a similar transformation in our perspective. The ego of the individual is no longer at the center of our calculations. Service freely rendered replaces competitive individualism as the primary wellspring of motivation:

• Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself. Verily, such a man is reckoned, by virtue of the Will of God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise, with the people of Baha who dwell in the Crimson Ark.   (Bahá’u'lláh: Words of Paradise, 10th Leaf)
• Take pride not in love for yourselves but in love for your fellow-creatures.    (Bahá’u'lláh:  Tablets of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 138)
• Do not busy yourselves in your own concerns; let your thoughts be fixed upon that which will rehabilitate the fortunes of mankind and sanctify the hearts and souls of men.   (Baha’u'llah:  Gleanings, pp. 93-94)
• The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.
  (Baha’u'llah: Tablet to Mánikchí Sáhib, p. 10)
• Put into practice the Teaching of Bahá’u’lláh, that of kindness to all nations. Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path. (`Abdul-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 16)
• Man reacheth perfection through good deeds, voluntarily performed, not through good deeds the doing of which was forced upon him. And sharing is a personally chosen righteous act: that is, the rich should extend assistance to the poor, they should expend their substance for the poor, but of their own free will, and not because the poor have gained this end by force. For the harvest of force is turmoil and the ruin of the social order. On the other hand voluntary sharing, the freely-chosen expending of one’s substance, leadeth to society’s comfort and peace. It lighteth up the world; it bestoweth honour upon humankind.  (Selections From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 116)
• And the honor and distinction of the individual consist in this, that he among all the world’s multitudes should become a source of social good. Is any larger bounty conceivable than this, that an individual, looking within himself, should find that by the confirming grace of God he has become the cause of peace and well-being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men? No, by the one true God, there is no greater bliss, no more complete delight. (`Abdul-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, pps. 3-4 )
• Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self.  (Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, XLIII)

Two new books do a very good job of highlighting why the patterns of the built environment matter and explain how they impact social justice, public health and and the flourishing, or not, of healthy communities. Here they are:

• Toward the Healthy City: People, Places and the Politics of Urban Planning
• Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability

Publisher copy for Toward the Health City:

In distressed urban neighborhoods where residential segregation concentrates poverty, liquor stores outnumber supermarkets, toxic sites are next to playgrounds, and more money is spent on prisons than schools, residents also suffer disproportionately from disease and premature death. Recognizing that city environments and the planning processes that shape them are powerful determinants of population health, urban planners today are beginning to take on the added challenge of revitalizing neglected urban neighborhoods in ways that improve health and promote greater equity. In Toward the Healthy City, Jason Corburn argues that city planning must return to its roots in public health and social justice. The first book to provide a detailed account of how city planning and public health practices can reconnect to address health disparities, Toward the Healthy City offers a new decision-making framework called “healthy city planning” that reframes traditional planning and development issues and offers a new scientific evidence base for participatory action, coalition building, and ongoing monitoring.

One of the works I discussed at Louhelen was Albert Borgmann’s “Crossing the Postmodern Divide”.  I just read this Kirkus review, and it amazes me how closely Borgmann’s book tracks what we tried to do. Here is the quote:

From Kirkus Reviews

Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization, and science, by Borgmann (Philosophy/Univ. of Montana at Missoula). To recap: As if climbing out of the sea and becoming a land creature, man now climbs out of the once modern, now postmodern era into a being that finds him thinning out as he covers more space. The great thinkers and explorers (Bacon, Columbus) came, shattered, and remade the past and changed us all forever. Luther broke the bond to a central authority; Copernicus decentralized us from the sun; Descartes gave us rational method; Locke overthrew the rule of kings and headed us toward individualism and democracy. Then came the rise of industrialism, as the railroad and the corporation squeezed us into the modern era and we split up our spiritual center into work, family, and community, which are now fading before the flood of information technology, TV, and our privileged classes’ lack of interest in the poor. And we have lost faith, too, while living in our “sullen” postmodern era, with its rampant individualism and meaningless institutions. The more we grasp, the more ghostly our lives: “The hyperintelligent sensorium, just because it is so acute and wide-ranging, presents the entire world to our eyes and ears and renders the remainder of the human body immobile and irrelevant.” Borgmann finds hope in once-dying, now reviving Missoula, Montana, where daily city life has real spaces, real people, real tasks, and favors a “bodily vigorous, richly connected, and securely oriented life.” It is a place of charms and traditions, festivals and “the holy game of baseball.” The author ends with a ringing of church bells in his “heavenly city” and calls for all churches to follow Manhattan’s St. John the Divine with its commitment to social works. Not a light read–and never disingenuous. — Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Truthfully, I hadn’t finished reading the book, so did not even realize what lies ahead at the end of the work. I’ve been sipping it slowly and savoring the beautiful prose and depth of insight. Incidentally, Borgmann is friends with former Missoula mayor, Daniel Kemmis, who wrote “Community and the Politics of Place“, where Kemmis explores the notion of the “res publica”, the common realm or, literally, the “public thing”.  This is the Latin root of our word “republic” and underscores how the public realm and public institutions unite us. One of the New Urbanist insights is that institutional buildings deserve to be grand and to occupy the prominent center of our communities. The placement and architecture of our city halls, churches, libraries and other institutional buildings communicates something vital to rising generations of citizens about the values we hold.

One of the key issues facing our youth and young adults is how to choose a resilient strategy in a time of unprecedented change, a time when successive shocks are rippling through structure after structure of our society.  Here is a possible starting point:

• Follow your bliss. In other words, don’t worry overmuch about whether or not you are choosing the right vocation. Listen to the still small voice within. Trust yourself. No one has a crystal ball, so don’t try to “time the market”. The present order may change overnight or it may hold its present configuration for a long time to come. You want a strategy that will work for you, rain or shine.
• Acquire skills. Skills are transferable. And, while you are at it, strive for excellence. If you are an undergraduate, your education should equip you with certain fundamentals: the ability to reason, to write with grace and speak with eloquence, the ability to do math, to understand science, to critically analyze arguments. A liberal education in particular should elevate your vision, imbue you with a historical consciousness, extend your sympathies and fire your mind with the love of knowledge. If you can come away with just that, you have accomplished something valuable.
• Learn to read social forces. You need to have a larger vision. You also need to be able to analyze the forces that are impacting your life. Partly to avoid getting sucked down into despair and partly to be able to be forward-leaning, bobbing in the waves before they crash over you.
• Be entrepreneurial. If there is no job available to you, think about  selling a service or product that you create on your own or together with a few friends. Millions of people throughout the world don’t have any other option, and so it just seems normal. Traditionally, there was no sharp separation between performers and audiences either. It was just assumed that everyone would sing or play an instrument, because it is pretty much an inherent potential of all of us. Likewise learning to grow, gather or otherwise provide at least some of your own food. We have lost track of these capabilities on the road to modernity, but they are excellent insurance during hard times. If you can gain them while you are young, so much the better.
• Serve your community. And do remember that you are connected to every human being on earth. Try hard to avoid getting mixed up in things that are not healthy for people or the planet.
• Be gentle with yourself. No living thing responds to harsh treatment or harsh words. So do unto yourself as you would do unto others.  Above all, pray, and trust in God’s help.

1. A path – many people, embraces diversity, going somewhere, people create it, moving people from where they were – movement.
2. Using justice as a framework for how we view every single situation and contemplate our interactions in the situation.
3. City of God – organized using the logic of higher nature, city of the present built on exaltation of selfishness.
4. Interconnectedness of all reality means that all aspects of our lives can manifest divine qualities.
5. Values (positive and negative) underlie everything (technology, politics, education, economics, thought) in society.
6. Islamic and western examples of economies built on trust, motivated by love and service (Ibn Battuta’s account of competition to serve pilgrims, the medieval markets that began with 1st bell for the poor, 2nd bell for general customers). Implication – yes we can!.
7. Environmental problems have positive solutions. We can create them. We have a lot to offer.
8. The present configuration of society was not inevitable, we could have done it differently.
9. Education and spiritual education can help to counteract the stages of dehumanization referenced in the letter of the House of Justice. (Note: This point requires elaboration for anyone who did not participate in the discussion. It’s just here as a placeholder for now.)
10. Asking questions helps unlock power of mind. (Note: This is in reference to kitchen table discourses and finding ways to depoliticize conversations by breaking out of the usual interpretive frame.)
11. No imitation! (“When we speak of religion we mean the foundation of religion, not the blind imitations, or dogmas, which has crept in afterwards, and which are ever destructive, which are ever the cause of the effacement of a nation, which are ever the cause of hindrance.”  We are meant to investigate reality for ourselves, seeing through our own eyes.)
12. Building local communities is transforming social structures.