{"id":11543,"date":"2025-09-03T18:10:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=11543"},"modified":"2025-09-03T18:10:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:10:52","slug":"till-we-have-built-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/03\/till-we-have-built-jerusalem\/","title":{"rendered":"Till We Have Built Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A Toll of Two Cities<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Urban planning should celebrate and magnify the best of humankind. America\u2019s post-war sprawl does the opposite, by fragmenting communities and exacerbating injustice.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Nathan Gale<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Fatigue. This is, perhaps, one of the most common emotions for those who are familiar with the American freeway toll system. If we forget our prepaid pass, we must navigate the dreadful online payment system. Or if, God-forbid, we miss the mailed bill, we will be fined multiple times the original toll fee. However, in hunting, the word \u201ctoll\u201d can also mean \u201cto entice.\u201d Similarly, city life is depleting when we encounter the polluted, impoverished, and worst aspects of our fallen world\u2014but urban living nonetheless holds our imagination.<\/p>

In the prophetic biblical book of Revelation, what began as humanity\u2019s Fall from innocence in the Garden of Eden culminates in ultimate blessedness in the New Jerusalem\u2014that is, in a city. As this publication has already discussed<\/a>, it is in urban contexts that we encounter most strikingly the crown jewel of God\u2019s creation: the human beings who bear His likeness. Just because urban living is good, though, does not mean we always walk in step with this goodness. In his fifth-century book The City of God<\/em>, St. Augustine traces the contours of his City of Man\u2014domains marked by self-love, a lust for power and dominion, and worldly pursuits\u2014and the City of God\u2014one founded on love for God and neighbor and striving for eternal happiness through faith and virtue. Phillip Bess\u2019s Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred<\/em> argues that modern urban planning perpetuates the City of Man and all of its attendant ills.<\/p>

After World War II, the United States\u2019s victorious status allowed our nation to channel her military-industrial energies to private, domestic life. New technologies enabled the widespread use of automobiles, and the suburbs boomed. Because these developments are separated by distances only accessible via car, this post-World War II urban sprawl (also known as the \u201cpostwar sprawl\u201d) defines modern urban planning. Rather than traditional urbanism\u2014where mixed-use cities contained most if not all the necessities of life within a ten- or fifteen-minute walk\u2014the postwar sprawl separates these essentials by centering the automobile as the mediator between spaces.<\/p>

Though unbelievable human flourishing has been produced by humane aspects of these events, such as using economic development to prevent nuclear warfare during the Cold War, Bess outlines why this model of urban planning is ultimately unsustainable and unjust. To begin, cars are the only way to access different districts that comprise the sprawl, so \u201cthose without cars (particularly children and the elderly) are disenfranchised.\u201d Additionally, \u201cWealth and poverty are concentrated, \u2018separating people by income, age, and race\u2026 by failing to provide a genuinely public realm shared by all.\u2019\u201d Bess observes that our \u201cextreme inequality of educational opportunity\u201d results from unnaturally splicing human living into districts (i.e. recreational, residential, industrial, corporate, etc.) and abandoning communities in residentially undesirable zones like a warehouse-dominated area. Finally, in terms of the environment, he notes how the postwar sprawl \u201ceats up agriculture\/landscape, creates an overreliance on cars that contributes to America\u2019s proliferating obesity, and increases air pollution (with cars) while discouraging energy self-sufficiency.\u201d<\/p>

The collective effect of these individual injustices is fatal because they violate essential aspects of human nature. Bess discusses this with the language of natural law. In this framework, humans are guided by primary, objective, and universal goods discernible through reason. Unlike \u201claws\u201d of science\u2014which are really just mechanical descriptions of constant phenomena\u2014natural law is like any divine decree or civil law in that it is possible to disobey it. Though the origin of these universal needs is debated by natural law philosophers of all (or no) faiths, what is conspicuous in these discussions is that every culture throughout history shares basic moral norms\u2013though qualified differently\u2013like preserving life, opposing black lies (i.e., those that are exclusively self-serving and harmful), uniting in marriage, not stealing, and honoring some Higher Power (whether a god or the communal ideals). Bess urges us to realize that the technology-centered postwar sprawl prevents the fulfillment of many of these goods. For most of human history, he observes, cities have been faithfully grounded in human capabilities, like accessing life necessities\u2014whether biological, social, and\/or spiritual\u2013within ranges of normal walking speed. However, to have spaces for \u201crecreation\u201d and spaces for \u201ccorporations\u201d etc. all requiring an automobile, it is no wonder that people are atomized and isolated while civil life splinters. Therefore, in light of this embodied reality that is part of our human nature, and the negative results of modern district planning, reason demands we return to designing urban layouts that are \u201cmixed-use, walkable settlements\u201d if we are to foster individual actualization and craft a cohesive society.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Urban living can and should accommodate many different types of people while demanding moral uprightness through neighborliness.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This is not an ideologically one-sided issue. To be sure, some are more inclined to recognize how the environment is negatively affected by an overreliance on cars, may focus on how wealth gaps are unnecessarily aggravated by suburban development, and vocalize how negative racial attitudes have sometimes manifested in ways that prevent genuine equality of opportunity. Meanwhile, many other people have accurately observed that the isolated district model of the postwar sprawl has obliterated community and the essential moral accountability that comes with a robust culture of \u201cneighbor.\u201d Additionally, some of these same people argue that urban communities must have placeness<\/a>: historical architectural and civic identities that run afoul of the dominant postmodern, utilitarian view of design. These focuses are not opposed but complimentary. Cities can and should be both beautiful and environmentally healthy. Urban living can and should accommodate many different types of people while demanding moral uprightness through neighborliness.<\/p>

Bess points to signs of hope that we may move beyond the postwar sprawl. The Congress for the New Urbanism<\/a>, which Bess praises in his book, hopes to change hearts, minds, and street layouts. It serves as an active body for the academics, architects, and everyday citizens who want to build a more humane, more just world for ourselves and posterity. Instead of isolated city districts, New Urbanism seeks to recover the Urban Transect model\u2014the city planning methods common to all cultures and times before the twentieth century. This framework reduces the environmental strain posed by the car-centric postwar sprawl and reinvigorates a robust sense of \u201cplace\u201d and identity by centering beautiful civic institutions (like town halls, courthouses, places of worship, data centers, banks, associations, schools, etc.). To be sure, this kind of project cannot be mandated from the top down. It must start with each of us choosing to abide in the locales to which God calls us, prioritizing spiritual vibrancy, human craftsmanship, and environmental stewardship over cheap industry, and consistently choosing the good of our neighbor regardless of the immediate payout, or lack thereof.<\/p>

We must remember that not everything that glitters is gold. It is tempting to distract ourselves with the shiniest corners of the postwar sprawl in suburban shopping malls and tidy HOAs and forget the reach of its injustices. Like the tolls on a road, we must suffer inconveniences and personal costs to build a smoother path for all people. And, though our major American cities languish from the injustice of the postwar sprawl, we can collaborate to redeem the \u201ctoll\u201d of urban living. Though we walk in the City of Man, we can take baby steps toward building the City of God.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Nathan Gale<\/strong> completed his undergraduate studies in History at the University of Northwestern\u2013St. Paul (\u201824). He was raised a thoroughbred suburbanite but now lives near the heart of St. Paul, MN and delights in riding the metro. He is an avid reader, lifter, and socializer. He will continue his academic career at the University of Minnesota School of Law (\u201828).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred<\/strong> was published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 2007. It is not available to purchase from the publisher but can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>

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Urban planning should celebrate and magnify the best of humankind. America\u2019s post-war sprawl does the opposite, by fragmenting communities and exacerbating injustice. Review by Nathan 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