Wednesday, January 2, 2008
As part of our ongoing conversation about urban and suburban neighborhoods and land use development, Rick Garnett (post here) asked me for my evaluation of Notre Dame architecture Professor Philip Bess’s mongraph, titled “The Polis and Natural Law: The Moral Authority of the Urban Transect.” Professor Bess’s proposition is that the "Urban Transect" — which he defines as focused upon “mixed-use walkable settlements” — constitutes a fundamental natural law precept that is “valid for all human beings in all times and places” and thus the fostering of which is binding upon all as a matter of conscience.
I very much enjoyed Professor Bess’s engaging manuscript, finding much to praise (and learn from) in his explication of natural law in the Aristotelian and Thomist (Catholic) intellectual traditions, as well as admiring his clear and cogent descriptions of various patterns of housing developments. His engaging style and frequent use of illustrations (both visual and in words) convinced me that taking a course in architecture from Professor Bess would be a wonderful educational experience.
But, as Rick anticipated, I was not convinced by Professor Bess’s central thesis, or at least not so convinced as to accept that all persons of a well-formed Catholic conscience are required to bow before the "Urban Transect" as an infallible moral proposition.
So where, Rick asks me, has Professor Bess “gone wrong”? In my view, he goes astray in at least three ways:
First, Professor Bess overstates the virtues of high demographic density, while neglecting the potential underside of the union of all dimensions of human life in a single geographic setting. If “social isolation” is the danger of the modern suburb, then I submit that “social suffocation” is the risk of the cohesive urban core. Professor Bess touts the New Urbanism vision of being able “to work, shop, play, learn and worship in the same neighborhood.” I too see the appeal of that vision — most of the time.
But what some might see as a dream community, others might experience as a living nightmare. Not everyone may wish to see the boss and co-workers all day at the office, then again in the grocery aisle when picking up the fixings for dinner on the way home, still again at the school softball game that evening, and yet again over the back-yard fence that weekend. Not everyone may wish to encounter the same set of people, over and over again in every dimension of human life and every activity during the week, a never changing human tableau with the same faces and in the same places, day after day.
Most of us are enriched by living within a multiplicity of communities throughout the week. During the work day, we engage with our colleagues at our place of employment, working together as a team to achieve the goals of our collective labor. In the evening and on the weekends, we play and relax with our neighbors and other friends, simultaneously relating stories about what we separately experienced elsewhere in the larger metropolitan setting during the work week and being drawn together by our common interests in our families and neighborhood community. For parents of school-age children, we come together with other parents at the local or parish school, encouraging each other's children and celebrating their school achievements. On Sunday, we worship with our fellow parishioners, yet another community and one of deeply-shared meaning. The fact that, for most of us, these communities do not fold completely in on each other is not a curse, but a blessing.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Especially in my lonely moments (of which there seem to be more as I grow older), I do earnestly wish for that place where, in the words of the theme to Cheers, “everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” But does that yearning for community really demand a planned residential community in which every aspect of daily life is located within a few hundred yards, as Professor Bess suggests as an absolute moral command? I just don’t think so. Instead, the “mixed-use walkable settlement” strikes me as one viable option out of many, one that I find more appealing on some days than on others (or more attractive at some stages of my life than at others).
Second, Professor Bess’s vision, by insisting upon a pedestrian-centric approach to community development, is too narrow to be realistic and is largely incompatible with the modern world. Professor Bess defines the Urban Transect more narrowly than do some others in the New Urbanism movement, saying that it requires not only the ready availability of public transit but should be a fixed site in which all or most of daily life activities are located within a five- to ten-minute walk. In so doing, Professor Bess takes a historically-contingent demographic pattern dating to ancient times and anachronistically drops it into the modern world of dynamic economic and social arrangements.
The "walkable settlement" emerged in primitive times, in which by necessity the average person was born, lived, married, worked, reproduced, and died within a few square miles. The social cohesiveness contributed to an unavoidable insularity, in which people’s experiences were narrowly focused on their discrete set of neighbors and their understanding of the larger world was sadly limited. The high density “mixed-use walkable settlement” of the primitive and medieval worlds was one of social and economic stagnation.
By contrast, those places where human progress flourished and where economic advancement was ignited were the more cosmopolitan urban settings, in which the movement of people (and thus of ideas) was fluid and ever-changing, not tied down to a single geographic point or residential arrangement. Human progress has not been measured by how small is the span within which one can walk from hearth to workplace.
The primary reason that most Americans do not live within a five- to ten-minute walk from where they work is not the limited availability of affordable housing or the preferences of suburban zoning for single family dwellings (although such circumstances of course play a part). Rather, our residential developments reflect the positive economic reality of a dynamic and post-agrarian economy, in which specialization of products and services separates the work-place and the market from the residential neighborhood. In contrast with the “mixed-use walkable settlement” of the pre-modern agrarian society, in which the limited choice of goods and services available to the average person were produced in a small geographic area and sold in the village marketplace, the modern American economy offers a wealth of goods and services responsive to a national marketplace. The economic opportunities created by this market specialization, with its diversification of production and geographic locations, are manifold and multifold — including allowing more people than in prior generations to be devoted to such academic pursuits as writing about natural law and land-use planning.
Third, Professor Bess mistakenly translates a contested preference for a certain approach to community development into an absolute moral precept. In general, I am skeptical of any argument that presents a position on a political or social issue, not merely as an attempt to persuade others that the author’s vision is attractive or at least preferable to others, but as an absolute moral principle to which fealty is demanded by all persons of good conscience. I simply do not accept that the Sierra Club’s political platform for land use planning is grounded upon an infallible moral principle to which I as a Catholic must pledge allegiance, akin to my faithful acceptance of the the Immaculate Conception.
To be sure, Professor Bess does acknowledge that his pedestrian-centric Urban Transect proposition should be acted upon within the constraints of prudential judgment. But he leaves little to no room for such prudential judgment. Indeed, later in the monograph, he withdraws what he had earlier allowed, saying that “while there are surely occasions when prudential judgment warrants ambiguity rather than precision, this appears to me not to be one of them.” The complexities of modern life cannot, in my view, be so simplified into such a one-size-fits-all conception of community building as the equivalent of a moral command, excluding all other perspectives.
I acknowledge with appreciation and gratitude that thoughtful persons, frequently persons of faith, are taking steps to bring about a social revival of the central city. I imagine that Eduardo and Professor Bess, in different ways, are among those making a positive effort to arrest the social, educational, and governmental declines that have tarnished our cities, while working to improve the cultural climate in the cities that often is inhospitable to families.
As I said in my earlier posts (here and here), at the right stage in my life, I may again move to an urban setting that includes the advantages of community that the New Urbanism advocates. But I make no pledge to do so. Instead, I cherish the freedom the make the choice that is right for us when the time comes — and defend that same freedom for others. On this subject, as on others, I strongly believe that a conception of Catholic Social Thought that does not leave ample room for liberty is hollow, fails to connect with the inherent dignity of the human person, and will not resonate with the faithful.
Greg Sisk
A regular reader sent me some choice quotes on cities and urbanism from St. Thomas Aquinas:
[T]hat city enjoys a greater measure of peace whose people are more sparsely assembled together and dwell in smaller proportion within the walls of the town, for when men are crowded together it is an occasion for quarrels and all the elements for seditious plots are provided. Hence, according to
Aristotle’s doctrine, it is more profitable to have the people engaged outside the cities than for them to dwell constantly within the walls. But if a city is dependent on trade, it is of prime importance that the
citizens stay within the town and there engage in trade. It is better, therefore, that the supplies of food be furnished to the city from its own fields than that it be wholly dependent on trade.
- Thomas Aquinas, De regno ad regem Cypri (II,iii).
A further requisite when choosing a site for the founding of a city is this, that it must charm the inhabitants by its beauty. A spot where life is pleasant will not easily be abandoned nor will men commonly be ready to flock to unpleasant places, since the life of man cannot endure without enjoyment. It belongs to the beauty of a place that it have a broad expanse of meadows, an
abundant forest growth, mountains to be seen close at hand, pleasant groves and
a copiousness of water. However, if a country is too beautiful, it will draw men to indulge in
pleasures, and this is most harmful to a city. In the first place, when men give themselves up to pleasure their senses are dulled, since this sweetness immerses the soul in the senses so that man cannot pass free judgment on the things which cause delight. Whence, according to Aristotle’s sentence [Eth. Nic. VI, 5: 1140b 11-21], the judgment of prudence is corrupted by pleasure."
- Thomas Aquinas, De regno ad regem Cypri (II,iv).
So, the city should be pretty, but not too pretty. Hmmm. Candidates, anyone? The "mountains" criterion rules out much of the land, including my own South Bend. Portland and Santa Fe might be too beautiful. Hmmm. "Where would St. Thomas live?"
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I begin by expressing my appreciation to Eduardo Peñalver, Rick Garnett, and Michael Scaperlanda in continuing this interesting thread on metropolitan area communities, housing choices, and lifestyle, with this blog’s distinct flavoring of these issues with Catholic Social Thought as a perspective. I apologize for my long delay in responding, due to the need to end my procrastination and finish grading those Civil Procedure exams before leaving tomorrow for the Association of American Law Schools meeting in New York, as well as the sad need to take a very sick cat, our beloved family pet, to the veterinarian. I rely on the generosity of my fellow bloggers in allowing me to offer these delayed responses.
To reduce the length of these postings while giving adequate weight to each, I respond here to Eduardo and then later this afternoon will respond to Rick's posting of the Philip Bess abstract.
I am pleased to learn from Eduardo's recent message that I misread his original Washington Post op-ed/Mirror of Justice post. I had read his op-ed as general indictment of suburban living (through the ascription to the growth of the suburbs of a series of “social ills” from “climate change and the destruction of wetlands to obesity and social isolation”). I also had understood his op-ed as saying that, while the decline of the suburbs may begin naturally due to economic changes in housing and gas prices, a “shift toward a more regional outlook” in government organization would also entail a more deliberate approach to social planning that would place the heavy thumb of the state on one side of the scale of housing choices for Americans.
Understood instead as a positive advocacy of a New Urban approach in residential options, in which people could live, work, and shop in “transit- and pedestrian-friendly, diverse neighborhoods,” Eduardo's vision has much that is attractive. While it is not the choice that I have made at this stage of my life, I have made precisely that choice (or something similar to it) in the past and could well imagine doing so again in the future.
That being said, I am skeptical that Eduardo’s vision can be achieved on a broader scale while preserving what his recent posting positively describes as the preference (that Eduardo shares) for the “single family dwelling over the high-rise apartment.” If suburban growth is to be curtailed (through natural evolution or governmental planning), and a higher-density demographic pattern to be achieved, multiple-unit dwellings will necessarily come to dominate the housing options available to the next generation of Americans. In this respect, I think there is much to Michael's postings here and here (passing along as well the thoughts of a student) that the New Urban vision will be available mostly to the affluent.
The New Urban vision may be more likely to achieve success if it were to be adjusted in recognition of the different stages of life and lifestyle that most of us experience during our adult lives. Young adults, unmarried and married, will be attracted to city center living, for economic reasons and easy access to the kinds of entertainment and activities that the city center best affords. Families with children are more likely to seek the suburbs (or less dense areas of cities), in order to secure a single-family home with a yard in a safe neighborhood of similarly-situated families and in close proximity to a good quality school. When the children have left the nest, senior couples are again more likely to appreciate the greater ease of living in multiple-unit buildings without responsibilities for maintaining a home and yard, as well as having easier access to amenities, health care, shopping, etc. If options are designed that appeal more directly to the changing circumstances of lives as actually lived in this country, then we should be able within reasonable economic circumstances and land-use policies to allow the freedom of diverse choices for all Americans.
My primary theme, here and in prior messages on the Mirror of Justice, has not been so much to insist that my vision of community or choice of neighborhood (or on other questions of community and politics) is perfect or even preferable (and my vision about many matters is not fixed in space and time), but rather to contend that Catholic Social Teaching should be understood as optimistically and openly embracing liberty as a high value, consistent with an appreciation for the dignity of each human being. Catholic Social Thought is not a philosophy of limited imagination, social and political pessimism in allocating supposedly limited resources in a feudal setting, or regressive economic thinking.
One of the great strengths of Catholic thinking throughout the centuries has been an ever-expanding vision of human thriving that draws upon the best of each culture that the Church and its faithful encounter. The American contribution is to encourage a greater appreciation for liberty, future-looking optimism in human development, the virtues of limited government that is closer to the people, and a dynamic economy. The American Dream of home-ownership – a single-family home in a safe and pleasant neighborhood – deserves to be promoted and celebrated in Catholic Social Thought. On that point, it appears that we may find consensus among us on the Mirror of Justice.
Greg Sisk
In response to my post asking questions about the socio-economic diversity of the New Urbanism, my student Ray Denecke (OU ’09) writes:
“I am not an expert on New Urbanism, however, I did live in Rosemary Beach, which is a New Urban type community in the panhandle of Florida and I also worked for and worked in Seaside, another (and probably the first in the country to spark the trend) New Urban development. Many people think of Seaside and Rosemary Beach as resort communities, and essentially, they are. However, the concept was to create a new urbanism where people could work, live, and play all within a very close proximity to their residences - Seaside is approx. 80 acres and maintains a very vibrant retail/services central hub of town. Oddly though, I would guess that 95 percent of the people who work in Seaside or for Seaside do not live there because the market is astronomical . . . I haven't checked recently, but a 1200 square foot home (not on the beach) goes for about one million dollars. So while the concept of new urbanism is grand, the practicality of it is not, especially when one of the purposes, if you will, of creating such communities is to foster diversty (see New Urbanism website). My experience has been that most of these communities cater to the very wealthy considering the lots on which homes are built (some are often no bigger than 40' by 80') cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, some even reaching above a million dollars. Duany Plater Zyberk (Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk - she is now the Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Miami) has had a hand in creating dozens of these types of communities. They have created the mold from which many others have followed. Unfortunately, most, if not all, of their developments are very expensive and located in resort areas, especially in Florida and other coastal states or mountainous states. Another unfortunate result has been that those who follow DPZ's lead, tend to create their communities for more affluent people. Thus, I think these communities that exist now and are currently under construction are quite insulated from the diversity they claim to desire. Not only on a socio-economic scale, but on other planes as well. When I lived in and worked in those developments I very rarely saw any persons who represented another race other than whites. These types of developments displace less affluent people in a number of ways. My experience was that when new homes were built in these developments, the homes immediately surrounding the development increased in value. Perhaps this prices-out those who would otherwise afford to live in the area sans the development. And who knows, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that developers are paying top dollar for existing structures in order to renovate them to create these developments or to tear them down to build up the development - I think this is referred to as Urban Infill in the industry. Anyway, I hope this was helpful.”
Are there examples of successful socio-economic integration in New Urbanism projects?
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
In response to Susan's post, I'm inclined to think that, yes, the University of Montana should be completely indifferent to the possibility that the Christian Legal Society's understanding of what it means to be "Christian" does not track perfectly -- in fact, I am quite sure that it does not track perfectly -- other Christians' understanding of what it means to be "Christian."
If the "Environmentalist Law Society" were to adopt a resolution stating that "respect for the environment, given the pressures of increasing population, must include a commitment to abortion rights and public funding of abortions", I would hope that lots of environmentalists would quit that organization (and start another one). I would not think, though, that the University of Montana should take up the question whether the dissenting environmentalists' understandings were more "environmentalist" than those backing the rule, or that the University should. simply because the group's understanding of what it means to be "environmentalist" is not shared by all environmentalists, exclude the Environmentalist Law Society -- assuming it continued to meet the formal eligibility criteria -- from the array of funded student groups.
Over the past two and one half years other MOJ contributors and I have addressed questions dealing with conscience, the authority of the state, the role of the law in society, and the proper place of religion in public life. I tend to think that our discussions and debate on these matters will continue. Earlier today I was reading a series of papers delivered at the annual meeting of the Thomas More Society in London and published in 1948. One of the papers given was written by the English Dominican Hilary J. Carpenter entitled “Law and Conscience.” As one who has criticized in the past the “mystery of life” passage and its exaggerated notion of autonomy and liberty authored by Justice Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, e.g., HERE and HERE, I found Fr. Carpenter’s words prophetic about the future of law and how Catholic Legal Theory can provide relief to its troubled future which some of us have recognized. In his opening paragraph authored in the late 1940s, Carpenter had this to say:
The age in which we live presents a rapidly growing cleavage between law and conscience; and this cleavage is resulting inevitably in the destruction of both. It is due almost entirely to the subjectivism which has been steadily graining ground for the last four hundred years. Once private judgment is admitted as a principle in the conduct of human affairs the objective norms of human action cease to function as such, and both conscience and law are deprived of their vitality. As early as the sixteenth century an incipient subjectivism made its appearance in philosophy as well as in religion; it is possible, indeed, that the effort to segregate philosophy from religion was the source of the whole evil. For when religion has ceased to provide a philosophy of life it is no longer true religion, and its sanctions lose their compelling force. Moreover, philosophy unallied to religion is a ship without rudder; it follows the caprice of any intellectual wind that blows. The purpose and the very content of human nature is lost sight of; law becomes an unstable shadow of its real self; and conscience, left to stand alone, is not more than a blind guide leading the blind.
I find it extraordinarily ironic that within the past few days (as I commented on in a recent posting HERE) that an English parliamentary committee chair has this dim view of religion in public life: “It seems to me that faith education works all right as long as people are not that serious about their faith.” If Fr. Carpenter is correct in his view (and I think he is) that the separation of religion from public life will make the ship of state rudderless, it will be interesting to see in which direction Parliament travels if this MP's view prevails. It is also important to keep in mind that Fr. Carpenter did not restrict his counsel to the British Parliament. RJA sj
I agree with Rick that it "is not the kind of discrimination the state should care about when a religious institutions makes decisions about membership on the basis of that institution's religious commitments. My question in the context of the University of Montana law school situation is whether that means the school has to fund the organization with no regard for what is contained in the Statement of Faith required to be adhered to as a condition of membership?
In this situation, we are not talking about the decision of a religious institution. Rather, presumably the current student leaders of the CLS have adopted a Statement of Faith that captures their understanding and interpretation of the Christian faith. (And a different group of students leaders might very well have come up with a Statement of Faith that was not identical to the one adopted.) There may be any number of students who call themselves Christian who share some but not all articles of the Statement of Faith.
I have no hesitation in saying that a university should provide funding to a CLS that restricts its membership to Christians. But while I'm not prepared to express a firm disagreement with Rick and Steve on this matter, I have to confess that I pause a little here, where we are talking about protecting restrictions based on some group of students' interpretation of Christianity, which interpretation excludes others who are Christians. Isn't there a difference between saying the state should not interfere with a religious organization's determination of what is required for its faith and the protection on religious grounds of whatever the current group of students in charge determines Christianity means?
A question for Greg, prompted by his characteristically thoughtful and eloquent post on land-use, suburbs, cities, preferences, etc. . . . I assume he would not accept the following claim, propounded by my friend and Notre Dame colleague, Philip Bess:
The Aristotelian-Thomist intellectual tradition’s understanding of natural law---which is the broad pre-modern tradition of western culture---is that there are certain foundational principles of morality that are (according to Thomas Aquinas) “the same for all, both as to knowledge and to rectitude”---in other words, principles of morality that are not only right for all human beings but knowable (and at some level known) to all human beings. These foundational principles of morality, along with their first few rings of implications, are known as the natural law.
The Urban Transect refers to that range of human habitats conducive to human flourishing within which human settlements are part of a sustainable (albeit not necessarily locally bio-diverse) eco-system. These habitats, diagrammatically depicted as Transect-zones (“Tzones”), range from less dense human settlements to more dense human settlements; but each urban T-zone denotes a walkable and mixed-use human environment wherein within each urban zone many if not most of the necessities and activities of daily life are within a five-to-ten-minute walk for persons of all ages and economic classes.
It is the thesis of this paper that, given this understanding and characterization of both natural law and the Urban Transect, the proposition “Human beings should make settlements in accordance with the Urban Transect” is generally valid for all human beings in all times and places---and therefore constitutes a natural law precept. If this is true, such a precept would be binding in conscience for---and acted upon with prudential judgment by---all persons who act in accordance with right (practical) reason; and especially for and by persons who understand themselves to be a part of the Aristotelian-Thomist intellectual tradition.
So . . . Greg, do you think Prof. Bess is wrong? Where has he gone wrong?
