“Every community is established with a view to some good . . . The polis aims at the highest good.”
– cf. Aristotle, Politics, Book 1 ll.1-6

Ancient Greek thinkers defined the polis (sometimes translated “city,” sometimes “state”) in terms of its citizens, as the community of people joined together in pursuit of a shared political order. Meanwhile, the modern usage of the word—and associated terms like metropolis and cosmopolitan—connotes the city as physical structure, a built environment rooted in a particular place. In this issue of Fare Forward, we want to explore a question that arises from both understandings: How do we exist together in public?

Urban environments force us to confront this question, because what makes a city a city is many people sharing a relatively small space. As the urban theorist Jane Jacobs put it, “the sight of people attracts still other people.” Cities contain a preponderance and diversity of people and the risks and opportunities that accompany them. In their expansive concreteness, cities both remind us of our embodiment and impel us to transcend our limits. They magnify the best and worst of humanity: innovation, creativity, community; poverty, prejudice, danger.

At a time when we’re struggling to figure out how to live together amidst divides, disconnection, and disillusionment, a closer look at our shared spaces can help us understand the infrastructure that undergirds our interactions— and may even lead us into a deeper understanding of what it means to love our neighbors.

Your pitch for this issue might consider questions like these:

• What infrastructure, norms, or expectations govern and mediate our interactions with each other as strangers in the day-to-day? What are the terms of engagement? What does it mean to love our neighbors in fleeting, surface-level interactions?
• Plato imagined the “just city,” defined by courage, wisdom, moderation, and justice. How can we put these virtues into practice in our cities and governing structures?
• In many ways, the purposes that the physical public square once served — commerce, community, romance, socialization — have now been assumed by the internet. What might the consequences of this be? What do we lose when we move interactions with strangers from the sidewalk to social media?
• Think about your commute. Who do you encounter? What landmarks do you notice? How does it shape how you interact with your surroundings?
• What is the role of children in public spaces? Where should children (not) be allowed? Should it be socially acceptable to correct/direct other people’s children?
• How can the purpose and function of a public space change over time (e.g. libraries)?
• What does it look like to cultivate order in public spaces? How should that value be weighed against others (compassion, inclusivity, liberty, etc.)? What takes primacy?
• How do design choices affect our behavior? What makes a design choice “good” or “bad?”
• Imagine the city glorified; the New Jerusalem. What stays and what goes?

Please consider these examples a starting point, not a limit.

(Editorial Note: While Fare Forward is a Christian journal, we strive to practice “editorial hospitality,” by which we mean that anyone, of any or no faith background, can pick up a copy of our journal and feel that it is written for them. So don’t choose a topic that’s “intramural”—i.e., only of interest to other Christians. And as you write, don’t assume your reader is familiar with either Christianity as a whole or with any faith tradition in specific. That doesn’t mean you can’t talk about the specifics, just that you’ll need to briefly explain them so the intelligent reader can catch on.)