An Unquiet City

I've been thinking a lot about cities lately. What they mean, what they represent symbolically, how they function, what they are in reality. Mostly due, I suppose, to reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. I'll try not to rave too much about it, but it really is an interesting book, even for a layman with no formal training in architecture or urban planning. Jacobs, from everything I've read about her, was something of an amateur and an "outsider" when it came to urban planning, but loved her New York City neighborhood, and her book grew largely out of empirical observations made there and in other cities about "what works" (my phrase) when it comes to revitalizing cities. Apparently, she also carried on a rather bitter academic/professional feud with Lewis Mumford, an urban planner whose ideas she attacked in the introduction of her book. But by all accounts, both Jacobs and Mumford loved cities, and what cities stood for, and what they could be.

But really, what I want to focus on is the juxtaposition (in my own mind) of Jacobs's ideas with some of those of Thomas Merton. The connection appears tenuous, at first, so let me give some background to show where I'm coming from with this.

Throughout much of my life, I've straddled the line between being a city dweller and a small town (or country) dweller. Growing up, we lived in a secluded rural place, but the mall was less than 5 minutes away. Then, during college and ever since, I've lived basically a city life-- perhaps not as urban as NYC or Boston or Chicago, but Denver and Omaha are cities nonetheless. (Iowa City, as a distinctively college town, falls somewhat outside the conventional definition of "urban", but surely still counts as city living.)

Anyways, Merton also wrote a bit about cities, albeit from a theological perspective. Thus abstract and often symbolic, but the problems he thought about had concrete consequences. As a Catholic monk, he was typically concerned with social justice issues that pertained to urban life. Or maybe, with how urban life was brought to bear on, and directly affected, the spiritual lives of people. For Merton, as far as I can tell from his writings, "the city" is often synonymous with the forces of crass consumerism and capitalism and sheer greed, wherein human lives are a commodity for sale, and humans are consumers who exist so that companies (and a few plutocrats) can get wealthier. So it almost goes without saying that Merton's opinions of city life were quite low, and he often contrasted city living with the "simplicity" of rural monastic life.

For a long time I found I rather agreed with Merton, and railed (usually in privacy of my own thoughts) against The City. The abject misery, poverty, suffering, crowding, congestion, construction, traffic; the oversaturation by the media, the advertising every place imaginable, the concrete with no green space.

Then, I started reading Jacobs's book.

I hope I don't give the impression of being a leaf blown a new direction by every breeze that stirs it, but her book has caused me to re-evaluate my attitudes. For one thing, I had to take into account the real fact that I am a city person, and have been for a while now. And taking that into account, I had to consider if my own life was truly as dire and bad as Merton would have me paint it. The answer, of course, is "no." I asked myself: is city living, in and of itself, necessarily "bad"? Is it necessarily detrimental to human well being to live in an urban place? Once again, the conclusion I drew was "no."

I still find myself agreeing with Merton in a lot of ways, primarily in that I too feel we'd be better of in a less consumeristic, less greedy, less mindlessly conformist, society. But I no longer feel that those problems are necessarily tied to urbanity, though you might argue that urban living sometimes facilitates them. And hell, let me be frank: I enjoy city life. I do like plenty of peace and quiet, but I think I'd go stir-crazy if I was forced to live a rural life. I'd miss the restaurants, the variety of people, the "high culture" things like museums, galleries, concerts, Shakespeare On The Green, and the like.

My closing thoughts draw me back to a church bulletin from a couple of years ago, which sadly I no longer possess (though my memory of it is still vivid). The church's pastor would write a weekly "column" that was printed on the back of the bulletin, wherein he'd muse about some pertinent Bible verse or timely topic. The one I am recalling was a reflection on a verse from the Revelation. I can't now recall the specific chapter and verse, but it was near the end of the Revelation, where John describes visiting the City of God. The reflection involved some light exegesis around this fact -- that God's Kingdom, for Christians, is a city. It's active, bustling, full of varied different persons doing varied different things. The city itself was like a living thing. It may be crowded, and some people may be strangers. But still, it would be a holy place.

I wish now that Father Merton could've read that reflection.