Why Cities Matter
by Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard
Pretty much everybody doing anything today has to be thinking about how to respond to urbanism, especially in a global but also a developed world context. While it’s clearly too early to proclaim the “death of the suburb” clearly cities have experienced a resurgence. New York, LA, and San Francisco are at all time population highs. The District of Columbia and Philadelphia grew for the first time since 1950 according to the latest census.
Religion has been one of those movements that has to respond to urbanism. Christianity was traditionally an anchor of cities, especially the Catholic Church which was a key agency of assimilating of immigrants into American society, among other things.
However, in recent decades the urban church went into decline while the heartland of Christianity moved to the suburbs (along with rural and small town environments where it had always been strong). The growth of mega-churches to some extent parallels the rise of the mega-mall. Those steeped in this more suburban milieu need to have adjust their thinking if they want to succeed in penetrating a more urban one.
The book “Why Cities Matter” by Stephen Um of Citylife Church in Boston and Justin Buzzard of Garden City Church in Silicon Valley is an attempt to provoke that thinking. It’s fairly brief at only six chapters (of which I’ll talk about five), but covers some interesting ground.
The first couple of chapters make the case for why cities are important in general. I actually think this is a pretty good general purpose overview of the case for urbanism quite apart from any religious context.
One thing that really caught my eye was when they tackled the matter of why some cities fail. They seem to anticipate the objection that if cities are so great, why are so many of them like Detroit so screwed up? The answer they give is diversity – in the broadest sense of the word. Detroit is very racially diverse, but lacked economic diversity. As they put it:
The one phenomenon guaranteed to stifle the power of density is homogeneity. In other words, if everyone in a city does the same thing for work, thinks along the same lines, and lives relatively similar lives, no matter how densely clustered they may be, that city will lack the necessary innovation capital needed to sustain itself over the long haul.
Or as they put it in a way I’d never read elsewhere:
Density + Diversity = Multiplication
Density – Diversity = Addition
In effect, the non-diverse city is simply scaling horizontally as it grows. And when that growth stops, as it inevitably will, the authors note the obvious implication: “When the bottom falls out on a density-minus-diversity city, population addition becomes subtraction and there is no platform left on which to rebuild.”
The third chapter is a Biblical case for the city. I think this is particularly key and is something far too many people trying to adapt to cities and urbanism – the auto companies, for example – haven’t really done. What the authors are doing is re-telling the narrative of their own movement in an urban context. It’s not just that cities are important. But you have to be able to see how what you do has some authentic urban component to it so that you see the city as part of you, not just some foreign country you have to go figure out.
Having taken a look at the narrative of Christianity as authentically urban, they then turn for two chapters towards how to contextualize Christianity to serve the city. This starts with understanding the city itself on its own terms. In short, it starts with knowing the city’s story. Some questions they suggest asking include:
1. What is your city’s history?
2. What are your city’s values?
3. What are your city’s dreams?
4. What are your city’s fears?
5. What is your city’s ethos?
I’ve noted before how urban church leaders like Tim Keller have been willing to ask themselves the tough question of what they need to do adapt their ministry to the needs of their city, in contrast to too many urbanists themselves. How many urbanists really ask themselves these questions? How many of them go on an anthropology mission to understand their city? Too often, it doesn’t seem like many do. Because so frequently it’s the exact same “school solutions” that are proposed in city after city with little to indicate they’ve been seriously thought about in relation to the city in question: light rail, bike lanes, tech startups, mixed use, density, etc., etc., etc.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these or that sometimes you can’t just import a good idea once it’s been perfected elsewhere. Lots of mass consumer products succeed. However, if your entire plan for your city is based on off the shelf ideas from elsewhere, it’s probably going to fall far short of your ambitions.
I find it ironic that it is religious leaders, who I would expect might argue that they are selling the Ultimate Product, actually seem to be more advanced in seeking to contextualize what they do than do some urbanists themselves.
So if diversity breeds growth and homogeneity means stagnation doesn’t that also apply to religious diversity?
Andre, I think you’re onto something.
I don’t know any specific research that has looked at the matter of religious diversity and other outcomes. However, sociologist Rodney Stark has written extensively about how religious affiliation itself is highly dependent on diversity. Per Stark, one of the reasons the US is much more religious than Europe is that the US has lots of different traditions competing for adherents whereas Europe is dominated by official or de facto state churches where the ministers have job security and thus don’t have to hustle very hard.
It’s pretty intuitive I think that monopolies tend not to be good for anybody involved, usually not even ultimately the monopolist.
How would you explain the blue coasts? The northeast and west coast are among the most racially, ethnic, and religious diverse areas, yet in most cases are the least religious sections of the country. And, in a lot cases on the order of 40 or 50% less religious.
Peter, I don’t know. I’m just relaying Stark’s work. But the idea of competition vs. monopoly seems sound. I will say that in general my view is that New England (which I’ll limit myself to here) outside of Greater Boston is pretty stagnated generally. New England has amongst the lowest birth rates in the nation, for example. Possibly religious stagnation stems from the same sources as demographic and economic stagnation in New England, whatever that may be.
And clearly some religious activity is flourishing in these places. Judaism seems alive and well in New York for example, including the most orthodox varieties.
My experience in CT was that almost everyone was Catholic. I knew a couple of people that weren’t, but outside of New York and Boston, which are the vibrant parts of the urban northeast, it seemed pretty homogeneous.
The summons to anthropology and careful listening by ambitious Christians is so, so important. Without open-hearted and sincere listening their ecclesial ambitions will only decline into colonialism… that’s my fear anyway.
Have you heard much about the Parish Collective or the Inhabit Conference? It’s a wide tribe of placemaking Christians who share a hunch that the future of the church is rooted in neighborhoods and linked across cities. To that end their conversation has much to say about non-colonial church practices and placemaking experiments… something I wish Keller would explore more.
Thanks again for connecting the dots between church and city matters!
A couple of other thoughts-
1. Interesting Aaron that you note the lack of diversity in your economy leads to an ultimately unsustainable city. However, you have fondly pointed out in the past that having a cluster in an important field is the way to go to get big growth and to hold it long-term (i.e. New York for Finance, Houston for energy, Bay area for Tech). How do you allow for both to be true?
2. I was recently given some insight into biblical teachings that stated that the folks that wrote it were essentially country folk. If you read the Bible, it tends to vilify cities (i.e. Sodom and Gomorrah) and upholds agrarian ideals (i.e. disciples referred to as “lambs”, the Lord shown as the landowner harvesting the wheat and burning the chaff). Jesus himself often wandered in the wilderness. I guess I would have to read the book to see what the biblical case for cities is (not saying that there isn’t one).
George,
I previously did a 2×2 of specialization vs. diversity of some sort. I don’t believe they are opposites. New York has a diversity of specialities for example, though obviously is finance heavy. I think having a “calling card” industry is important, but not that it should become a monoculture and overwhelming dominant.
As for the Bible, other than Jerusalem, cities are portrayed very negatively almost top to bottom in the Old Testament. Jesus did do a lot of small town type ministry. However, the early church was an almost exclusively urban movement. And the usual case relies on an argument from that and the vision in Revelation of a New Jerusalem. The classic phrase is that “the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city” Um and Buzzard basically argue that the Garden of Eden was a type of urban park or city the making, though I’m not really doing it justice here.
In the realm of religion the current mode is moving not towards diversity, but “unification of diversity” into a singular conglomerate, a “One World Religion”. If that becomes true, then “sameness” will manifest and obviously if “diversity breeds growth” and antipodal “sameness breeds stagnation” then it will promulgate the death of religion, or at least its stagnation into an inert system. Interesting.
Yes, the fallible ideals of the “City of Man” vs. the paradisiacal “City of God” are an interesting contemplation… St. Augustine’s fascinating treatise “The City of God” comes to mind. Cain built the first city and it was reviled by the Holy One. And the account of the urban “Tower of Babel” and its ultimate destructive fate conveys the dilemma of Man’s enmity towards the Creator via self-sufficiency and self-reliance without God, and the price to be paid for human pride and self-adulation. I have concluded that particular account deals with the fate of a previous Earth Age and a former global technoculture when the world once spoke one singular common language, a feat that is possible only via technology, and that subsequently after reaching the zenith of civilization a transterrestrial cosmocataclysms wiped out that previous civilization and its post-catastrophic remnants were scattered worldwide into isolated geographic pockets and they were catapulted into a “Neobarbarianism” to ultimately develop separate tongues and languages of confusion as the millennia sluggishly passed and the slow and incremental process of recivilization began all over again, requiring another 13,000 years to get to our current civilizational zenith.
Everything is cyclic, yet Humankind continues to make the same mistakes despite the lessons of history… it’s history repeating as we see Towers of Babels going up around the entire Earth as brazen statements for various forms of world, national, economic, or religious pride, but all without God’s participation or focus.
“Detroit is very racially diverse” – Detroit is 83% one racial group. How is that “racially diverse”?
In response to Peter’s question:
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“How would you explain the blue coasts? The northeast and west coast are among the most racially, ethnic, and religious diverse areas, yet in most cases are the least religious sections of the country.”
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I would suggest that just as there are many faith traditions, denominations, and sects within the more organized religious communities, it should stand to reason that there are also many varieties of being unaffiliated with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.
I once lived with a roommate who was quite specific about being an Agnostic, and he displayed an equal level of disinterest in Atheism as he did Christianity.
Bottom line- perhaps through other variables, it may be possible to have greater or lesser variety in those who profess “None of the Above” in different geographic regions.
Cities fail because they are destined to do so. Christ has established the fulness of an Eternal Kingdom that is comprised ONLY of His bride, His Body, the church. Scripture shows a great deal toward “cities” because it was the only place people lived. A city can be a center of functioning society with 300 people in it. The effectual “influence” of cities are minute outside themselves and the gospel alone answers the reality of calling people, the church, to salvation, not cities. There are nor have there ever been, nor will there be a collective border of “God’s people”. God has not promised to save cities and nations but to create one nation out of all nations, His sheep who hear His voice and obey Him by His grace and for His Glory.
James I agree with you the most among all the interesting comments. The Gospel of Christ that converts people and gives them an inheritance in the Celestial city also makes them suitable to flourish in the present evil age; that is; in the cities where we have been placed. You are very correct that God is calling out a redeemed people to be a holy people for a future holy “transnational” nation. Cities are a special place to proclaim Christ and his kingdom.
However, I also agree with Jon’s great reference to Augustine’s great Christian Treatise “The City of God” and Jon’s conclusion in his last paragraph.
I believe that cities without a strong sense of humility and gratitude before God and a clear sense of divine purpose for mankind living in cities, will be just very boastful places filled with impressive buildings. Love and the compassionate use of wealth, along with innovation and economic productivity, make a city sustainable and noble.
I would like to see our great cities compete on the basis of a Christian world view and the Beatitudes along with innovation and productivity and sensible sustainability.
God bless, everyone.