Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (The Christian Practice of Everyday Life)
Like Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kunstler, Ray Oldenburg, and other urban visionaries, Jacobsen sees the city as a hopeful place, where community, tradition, and beauty come together on a human scale--a vision that an eclectic mix of architects, city planners, and sociologists has recently promoted as the New Urbanism. Jacobsen offers a distinctly Christian perspective on this phenomenon, looking to the Bible to develop a theology of the city. He believes that Americans' love affair with the automobile has undermined the social fabric by offering a false promise of independence while contributing to the impersonal nature of much of American society. He discusses the dangers of urban sprawl, the soul-numbing architecture of the late twentieth century and its devastating effects on communal identity, and the lack of appropriate public space in American cities. Jacobsen has much to say about how we got into the present predicament and what to do to change it, and by resurrecting the notion of the "good" city, he proffers the conception of the city as a spiritual place.June SawyersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved