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The Native Tourist
reformed/biblical observations on Christianity and culture

Friday, September 08, 2006
Thinking about Architecture and Cities
from a Christian Perspective.

That is what this article by David Greusel in Comment investigates.

This article from a Catholic perspective in First Things is also worth a look.

I had a terrific talk last Sunday with a friend and fellow member of the OPC who has been a planner for more than 20 years. Along the way we discussed New Urbanism and Jane Jacobs. We both thought that New Urbanist communities had a really fake quality about them (like Disneyland). His observation about Jacobs somewhat startled me. He saw Jacobs as primarly libertarian in her approach to cities - a response to the heavy-handed planning of modernists who wanted to raze neighborhoods and put in high rises. So the NU theorists (who claim to have Jacobs as their patron saint) are actually making the same mistake as the modernists - just in a quainter, gentler and more (to our eyes) aesthetic way.

Thoughts?