This piece is indebted to conversations and collaboration with
, and I look forward to highlighting his work on Public Goods soon.Cities get a bad rap. When cities struggle, they are dangerous and dirty. They are a concrete jungle. When cities prosper, they are sterile and soulless. They lose their edge to become an urban playground for yuppies.
They face a constant double standard. Traffic is always bad, and there is nothing worth going out for. There’s nothing to do, and everyone is always busy. There are too many breweries opening, and they are all too crowded when we go. Nothing ever changes, except my neighborhood is changing too much. Everything is too expensive, and we all ought to be paid more. Except the young professional finance types. They are making too much.
There is truth within each of these frustrations. But taken together, they become an uncharitable and distorted view of not only cities, but also of people. Cities are made of and by people. Criticism of cities quickly becomes a thinly veiled disgust for other human beings. “Inner-city” is rarely used as a geographic term.
This is particularly important for Christians. We are called to love our neighbors. Cities are full of neighbors. This love does not dismiss the issues cities face. There are real challenges for the future of cities: housing shortages, car dependent transportation, economic inequality, crime.
There are real enemies to change, some structural, like our infrastructure and status quo bias in local government, and some personal, like NIMBY activists who organize against affordable housing. Christians are called to love our enemies, too.
So regardless of whether the Christian looks at a city and sees neighbors or enemies, our response must be love. Christians are called to love cities— not the vague idea of people, or a city’s “brand,” but the built environment and the people it brings together in one place.
Cities need love. But what kind of love? There are three Greek words for love in the New Testament. Eros represents romantic love and passion. If someone has eros love for a city, it changes the definition of metrosexual.1
Phileo represents a broader affection or appreciation for a person, thing, or idea. I think most people who say they love cities mean it in the phileo sense. Transit enthusiasts, city planners, new urbanist designers, YIMBY policy wonks— they all have a deep intellectual and personal interest in cities and making them better.
The third word for love in the New Testament is agape. Agape describes a self-giving, steadfast love. Agape love is an action, not just a feeling. It can also describe a collective that practices this love: the beloved community.
Agape love is what God calls us to practice as a community. Agape love is what cities need. Thriving places require the unique promise and challenge of an active, humble, patient, and selfless love. This provides a lens through which we can view the most pressing question for cities: how do we respond to growth and change?
Growth and change are not categorically good or bad for cities, despite what activists of either side may claim. Both extremes do not love the cities for which they claim to advocate.
The constant opponent of growth only loves the past of a city. The perfectly preserved city exists as a collection of keepsakes, where the utility of something, or someone, depends on an ability to reflect a comfortable history.
The constant supporter of growth, however, only loves the future of a city. The current city and anything, or anyone, that stands in the way of progress becomes merely an obstacle to ushering in the future.
Both visions of the past and future are ultimately about power and control, not growth, and especially not love. They have created an imagined city that does not exist. To love a city is to be present with it. Cities thrive when they are dynamic spaces where many different people’s memories and dreams have the agency and opportunity to be lived out.
Growth and change do not determine anything themselves. Their impact depends on the institutions and social conditions that surround them. The two clearest examples of these competing interests are found in gentrification and sprawl.
These two issues are often separated because they happen in different areas of a city—one at its core, the other at its fringes— but both reflect similar dynamics in growth and change. Landowners who are willing to move benefit from selling at a higher price, but the remaining residents face displacement from the sudden reinvestment of capital that changes the hyperlocal housing and job market.
Growth leads to rising land values, but not necessarily displacement.2 Policy failures to address rising land values create both gentrification and sprawl. When a city grows but lacks the ability to build denser housing, people and capital go where they previously would not: historically disinvested neighborhoods and rural fringes.
What if agape love for cities offered an alternative? Neighbor love offers an ethic for not only preventing displacement, but also for welcoming more people into a community. Both are possible by building smaller, denser housing options throughout neighborhoods across the entire city.
Agape love offers successful and sustainable strategies for placemaking and development. John Marsh, founder and CEO of the Marsh Collective, started by renovating one home with his wife in her hometown of Opelika, Alabama. They dedicated their next efforts to a ten-block area of its downtown. Today, Marsh has developed over $1.3 billion in “redemptive real estate” in seven cities.3
With each opportunity they ask, “Will it make a positive difference in our city for 50 years?” They found this patient commitment outcompetes quick flips and short-term investments. Marsh continues: “We don’t think gentrification is a sustainable model. What would love do to this place?”
Marsh calls this “redemptification.” It is a business strategy that finds “beauty in the broken things,” because that is value that others fail to seek out. In one example, Marsh rented space to a new restaurant in a building he renovated. He set a low base rent to start, but after a few months, the rent would be a percent of the restaurant’s profits. Marsh’s success would be bound up with the restaurant's.
The Marsh strategy embodies agape. They began out of concern for where they lived. They share in the success and suffering of their partners. Their development empowers the surrounding community. They are humble enough to learn from their failures.
It’s been said that “change happens at the speed of trust.” Cities are in a crisis of change without trust. Perhaps that is why every city council debate, every new development, every neighborhood grappling with change, feels like the wheels are stuck.
If trust is speed, then love is the push that begins its acceleration. Love is an action, and our cities need us to act. It is a first step and a response.
Beloved, let us love cities, because love is from God.
In all seriousness, I do think eros love is an underrated idea in cities, and it could use further exploration. The pursuit of beauty and passion must be be included in how we design cities. I am persuaded by bell hooks and her writing on the importance of eros in the public sphere.
For the list of available research on the effects of housing supply on rent and displacement, UCLA keeps a list: https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-impacts/
I am intrigued by the notion of “redemptification.” Love involves quite a bit of “finding beauty in the broken things” and how we care for and steward land, property, and resources is an expression of our love for God, others and all of creation. Thank you for a great article.
What a wonderful response. I can’t wait to meditate on these words.