Posted on 06/29/2005 4:13:12 PM PDT by Lorianne
PASADENA -- Eric Jacobsen speaks passionately about things like sidewalks and store fronts. But he's not an architect or a developer. He's an ordained Presbyterian pastor who says city planning can have an important influence on religious experience. Jacobsen is an advocate for New Urbanism, the movement that calls for interdependence among residents by promoting pedestrian-friendly streets, parks and town squares in neighborhoods where shops and homes coexist.
The values of New Urbanism, whose national leaders gathered in Pasadena last week, are consistent with those of Christianity and a possible antidote to the isolation experienced by many churches and Christians, Jacobsen said.
Jacobsen, 38, wrote the book "Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith.' He is studying for his Ph.D. in theology of the built environment at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is now teaching the school's first class on the subject.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Jacobsen rode his bicycle to the Zona Rosa Caffe on South El Molino Avenue. He wore a blue dress shirt and a cuff of his gray slacks was tucked into his sock, so it wouldn't snag in the bike chain. Over a cup of coffee, Jacobsen extolled the virtues of the location, which bustled with passers-by. The shop's entrance abuts the wide sidewalk instead of being separated from it by a parking lot. A neighboring building was adorned with stained glass that would only be visible to someone on foot.
Jacobsen said Zona Rosa Caffe might make an ideal "third place,' the term New Urbanists use for a location that is not a person's home or place of employment. The third place is an important part of community, he said. It's where people from diverse backgrounds learn to interact, he said.
For Christians, the third place also provides opportunity for spontaneous ministry, he said. Jesus did much of his ministry in the context of everyday life. For instance, Jacobsen notes, in one Bible story Jesus was on his way to heal the daughter of a synagogue ruler named Jarius, when a sick woman touched his cloak and was healed.
The woman may not have been noticed by today's ministers, Jacobsen said.
"She's not going to call for an appointment,' he said.
Jacobsen is one of a growing number of Christian leaders nationally who are thinking theologically about urban design and applying its principles to the church. They advocate for New Urbanist concepts that force people to share with one another, dwell among their neighbors and allow for a healthy exchange of ideas.
Christians must see their ministry "as not just supporting the programs inside your church, but also caring about the whole neighborhood,' Jacobsen said.
Jacobsen said many Christians resist or ignore his appeals to New Urbanism. But that doesn't dampen his evangelistic fervor. Part of the challenge is the historical propensity of Protestants to dismiss architecture. The saying is that "the church is the people, not the building.'
"That slogan obscures the fact that the building influences how people relate,' Jacobsen said.
Many churches around the United States are isolated by suburban sprawl. The sprawl began in part because of federal subsidies after World War II, said Philip Bess, professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame. Bess, who has a master's degree in church history, is a Catholic and New Urbanist.
The low-interest housing loans the government provided GIs returning from the war applied only to new houses. Meanwhile, the government was funding the interstate highway system; zoning laws separated communities into their commercial, industrial and residential uses.
The suburbs were born, neatly dividing people by economic class and often making it inconvenient not to drive everywhere to the market, to work and to church.
Churches followed people into the suburbs. Bess said they also adapted suburban development patterns, buying sizable plots of land, building a church and surrounding it with a surface parking lot. Churches then offered multiple programs to draw members, who drove to the site, leaving neighborhoods behind.
Sprawl makes it more difficult for churches to achieve their objectives, Bess said. For example, anyone who can't operate a vehicle the young, old or disabled are disenfranchised, he said.
"Just as a matter of social justice it's arguably better to make mixed-use, walkable environments,' Bess said.
New Urbanism is a hot term in the world of Christian community development, said Curt Gibson, director of neighborhood ministries at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena. At Lake Avenue, there is a philosophical connection between the architectural movement and ministry focus, he said.
Several years ago a survey at Lake Avenue found that most of the children in the church's youth programs were driven there from other cities, or attended private schools, he said. The smallest group of students was from the Pasadena Unified School District.
The church poured resources into the Lake Avenue Community Foundation to expand its neighborhood outreach and tutoring programs. Now, PUSD has the largest representation in the youth program, he said.
"There's been a heart change at Lake Avenue,' Gibson said. "A subtle transition has happened where they recognize they need to be an active participant in the local community.'
Nationally, Randy Frazee is among leaders who favor New Urbanism. Frazee is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, a trend-setting Illinois mega-church attended by more than 20,000 people.
Mega-churches have become like castles surrounded by moats, Frazee said. The drawbridge is lowered a few times a year to let people in, where they become a subculture separate from the outside world.
"You have to disengage from your community to be involved in the church,' Frazee said, describing the problem. "Now the church has become irrelevant to the community.'
Frazee said Willow Creek is changing so members spend less time on campus and more in their communities. The push for integrating the values of New Urbanism will include the 10,500 churches in the Willow Creek Association, which links smaller congregations that share the mega-church's philosophy of ministry, Frazee said.
--Marshall Allen can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4461, or by e-mail at marshall.allen@sgvn.com .
What B.S!
The Willow Creek Association is a CULT if I EVER saw one!
He's writing his thesis on Paul's Epistle/Rezoning Application to the Judean Planning and Design Commission.
LOL...Guess he's ignored God's approach to the "urban renewal" of Gommorah.
Architects who try to design beautiful and useful buildings and building spaces are obeying the Lord...and when an artist tries to make something beautiful, he is showing the light of God that we all have in our hearts, albeit it may be (in the words of tolkien) a "splintered light" or imperfect light in our works
However, I am skeptical about a pastor who thinks he is an architect. One of the problems with the "new" Catholic churches is that they were designed by people with training in liturgical design...instead of by those with talent.
Better a skeptic who tries to humbly serve his art by expressing the beautiful than a pious fraud who thinks he knows what he is doing...
New Urbanism is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to eliminate private property and the automobile. Nothing is original in its conceptual arrangement so it cannot be thought of as a new school of architecture. Those desiring to see Americans herded into the cities and forced to live cheek and jowl with those they do not wish to live with all love this political Trojan horse.
BTW, the "Pastor" is a charlatan and apostate, but then, everyone on FR can smell one of these a mile off. What an idiot this man is.
It is true that the New Urban school of design is not original. It's an attempt to recreate the small-town lifestyle in which most people in this country lived during the years of our founding, before cities became so vast and dangerous. The rest of your statement is not accurate.
In suburban Washington DC, the Kentlands development offers an example of the New Urbanism. There it's possible to own a fine suburban house or townhouse within a short distance of shopping, school, church, or work. Many of the houses are built around the perimeter of parks or town squares, as they once were. Resident don't have to spend 3 or 4 hours a day stuck in Washington's nightmarish traffic; it's possible to spend that time at home with family. It's a more pleasant, relaxed lifestyle than the one many area residents have, with hideous commutes and mom spending every afternoon stuck in traffic while she tries to drive the kids around to do errands. In fact, it's very similar to the way people used to live in small towns when I was growing up.
Since the residents continue to own cars and houses, the argument that New Urbanism is a thinly-veiled attempt to take away private property and automobiles is not persuasive. As a cultural conservative who strongly favors tradition, I support this form of development if we must have development.
about 2/3 of the NU policy points were designed to eliminate or reduce automobile use.
NU developments are built in the suburbs, which precludes the elimination of automobiles. You live in Minnesota, apparently. If you lived in Washington DC, which has the most nightmarish traffic/commuting problems of any city besides LA, you would love to reduce your automobile use and commute only a few minutes to work. Few people like to spend four hours a day commuting. My commute, for instance, is ten minutes. There is nothing wrong with walking to the grocery store, biking to the video store, or letting your kids play in a park across the street from your house instead of having to drive them to one. I grew up that way, in a small suburb where everyone knew everyone else, and so have many millions of others in my cohort.
I believe the average American family make something on the order of 4+ trips to distinct destinations each day. Since our traffic patterns are nodal and not linear, the idea that a transit system will service a diffused population base is quite foolish and worsens the further one gets from either coast.
I agree. There is no talk of installing light rail either in the Kentlands or in any of the other Andres Duany developments. But considering how hellish it is trying to fight one's way into Washington and park there, it's a blessing that the terminus of our Metro subway system is only a few miles away.
The same goes for NU doctrine. For a few, like yourself (apparently), this is something they like and they can have that option if they choose. For tax dollars to spent on this kind of waste is chasing good money after bad - especially when it is forced.
What tax money? Such developments are like any other middle-class residential real estate development: private funds pay for them, not tax dollars. And no one is forcing people to buy there.
NU doctrine calls for high density housing integrated into the mix of homes. Fine, if you wish to live in such a place, bad if it is forced on you through smart growth planning. People go to suburbs because they wish to avoid crime and congested living.The kind of people who can afford to pay $500,000 to buy the townhouse next door to you are unlikely to be engaging in crimes. You are not going to be living next door to a drug dealer in a development like Kentlands, Celebration, Seaside, Sandy Spring, or Belmont Forest.
Another poster above hit the nail on the head - you cannot create community through any means other than free association and shared values. Tacking a porch onto row house isn't going to do jack to promote American unity.
But the people who are attracted to the idea of living in an eighteenth-century community are likely to share some common values.
Greater threat exists with this NU dogma now with the recent SCOTUS property seizure ruling in place. People should have every freedom to gather according to their personal conscience and pleasure. Government social experiments aimed at producing better citizens is a waste of tax dollars. Let the developers carry the idea forward and let the market decide its fate.
No one is holding a gun to the heads of the buyers and forcing them to live in such places. If people don't wish to live at NU developments in St. Michael's, MD or Spotsylvania, VA, there are many alternatives. There are more buyers than there are places within these communities, so prices are spiralling upward. The market appears to be deciding in favor of them.
I see that you are happy buying a home with these kind of amenities in a development you like. Good for you and I hope that the developers continue to do the same for others like you.
However, what you think is NU and what is NU are two different things. You should research it a little more and, I think, you'll find it is something completely different from what you a talking about.
a cuff of his gray slacks was tucked into his sock, so it wouldn't snag in the bike chain...LOL he cant even ride a bike and he wants to tell us how to live our life. Hey Pastor(aka...poser) there a thing god invented through man called a chain guard..get with the program.
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