The Grey Town metaphor from CS Lewis hits different when applied to zoning policy. The musical chairs framing really clarified how ordinances that restrict housing supply aren't just about aesthetics or traffic, they're actively removing seats from the game. I grew up in an area where 'neighborhood character' became code for exclusion, and this piece nails how that comfortable language conceals somethnig darker. The progression from personal convenience to systemic exclusion through zoning regs is what makes NIMBYism uniquely harmful compared to just individual selfishness.
The great walkable, edifying & dense traditional cities of Christendom were made up of cohesive religious polities and populations. When living in such close proximity, it was necessary that these bonds of ethnos, religio & way of life were tight, as these were the building blocks, not the disruptors, of real culture and the enriching public realms they made. The lesson of the great Christian cities is not an affirmation of blank slate modernism, but instead it's very refutation. The distinct urban artifacts of the peoples of Christendom tell you the nature and character of the peoples themselves, the very architecture speaks to their unity of religion, custom, ethnos, language & tradition. It is from this physical & metaphysical cohesion that we can tell an Etruscan Settlement from a Roman settlement, or a Lombardian village from a Germanic village. In the larger cities there are great examples of foreign quarters, but they are just that, colonies of a foreign people in a foreign land, distinct to them and their way of life. Such quarters can only exist for the good of both parties when the host body is healthy and cohesive, and we shouldn't underestimate the tension and discord that having such quarters sewed. (I think of the tensions between the Byzantines and Venetians in Galata for example... it was certainly economically advantageous but was a source of centuries of strife & tragedy). There is something to be said for a crossroads city, but there is also something to be said for a shire. I ask you, where can Americans build their shire?
We will always have New York, but must Galena, Illinois or Nantucket Island become a New York too?
Americans deserve their own dense walkable polities emblematic of their traditions, for themselves and their posterity. Only then can they host a few other choice peoples at a time for their assimilation. These are the hearths of tradition from which a life of charity springs.
Where can I take my children to raise them in a distinctly American, distinctly Christian and dare I say even Catholic way of life? We the young Christian men of the west are looking for hometowns to raise our children in with the cohesion our parents naturally enjoyed and finding it almost impossible. We are already deracinated; we are looking for roots.
We are looking for something, anything, to find in common with our neighbor.
Air dropping foreign brothers and sisters into a cohesive polity doesn't enrich it for either group & sews the seeds of discord & deracination for both. If there is any hope of newcomers being assimilated into an American way of life, then the host body cannot be overwhelmed, the original people and their traditions must first be established healthy, dominant, and secure.
NIMBY's suspect that urban density is a globalist plot to destroy their neighborhoods, and your professed attitude here proves their point. We would have a much easier time selling density to Americans if they knew it was actually for their own children to start homes and form community bonds & roots of tradition. Instead, you are proving their fears by insisting we fill every potential starter home with a refugee from a far-off nation of people who haven't lived alongside them since days of the Tower of Babel.
Inner-city crime and mass immigration have driven Americans to the suburbs. If you insist on inflaming those societal disruptors out of a false sense of Christian charity, you will keep American NIMBYS clinging zealously to their plastic disposable auto-sprawl.
I do think Americans can overcome their NIMBYism and start forming small dense polities again, with wide ranges of housing types to help out different ages and incomes, but only if they are allowed to gatekeep their distinctly American towns with gates & walls akin to those of the glorious & zealous Christian cities of old Christendom.
You raise a lot of compelling points. You should read the New Testament, it answers pretty much all your concerns. Check out the book of Matthew, it's really well written. Matthew 25:35 is bars. If youre more into the oldies tho, Hebrews 13:2 is a classic.
Great news, I've actually been part of a Gospel of Matthew Bible Study for the last 4 months! Let me just jot down your observations here so I can add them to my notes...
Matthew 25:35 "(I was) a stranger and you welcomed me"= We can't have a real country
Hebrews 13:2 "Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels" = Being demographically conquered is angelic
Thanks man, these are great insights! Let me know if you've got any more winners.
Look, I'll meet you halfway here because I think you're actually onto something, just backwards.
"We are already deracinated; we are looking for roots." Yeah man. That's real. The alienation is real. The loneliness is real. The "where do I raise my kids in actual community" thing is a genuine crisis and not enough people take it seriously.
But here's where your diagnosis gets weird: the dense walkable neighborhoods in America that still have block parties and porch culture and abuelas who know everyone's business? Those are disproportionately immigrant neighborhoods. The "plastic disposable auto-sprawl" you're grieving? That was the escape from diversity. White flight was a self-own. You're describing a wound and blaming it on the people who didn't inflict it.
The "cohesion your parents naturally enjoyed" wasn't destroyed by refugees. It was destroyed by the racism in the GI Bill, redlining, suburban zoning, car dependency, and the decision to build communities around consumption rather than proximity. These were projects of the white Christian majority. The call is coming from inside the house.
You're looking for roots. I get it. But you're describing a crisis of capitalism and diagnosing it as a crisis of demographics. Gates won't grow roots. They just keep you lonely with better aesthetics.
You may be surprised to learn that I agree with you. Really, not in jest. Though... I suspect we have different interpretations of to whom the racism flowed in postwar planning. In any case:
I'm angrier at white boomers who have insisted on being the "end of history" than I am at my Pakistani neighbor whose kids ride scooters with mine in the alley behind our townhouse every weekend. I'm more upset with the urbanist author of this post who wants to flood any new townhouse we build with foreign refugees, than I am with any of my neighbors actually on my row of predominantly foreigner inhabited townhomes.
They' just doing what's in the interest of their own peoples, which is not in my interest, my children's interest or the interest of my people. My neighbors to the best of my knowledge are not bad people, and they deserve to be treated with respect. But they are not of my people, and I'm not of theirs. While they are my neighbor though I will and do treat them with Christian charity, and I do my best to make friends with them (though it's hard when you have literally nothing in common). The politics of my area will, and already has, shifted towards extracting wealth from me and my people and redistributing it to them. They're not here to assimilate, or flee persecution, they're here for stuff. Unfortunately, in time it will probably turn them into deracinated consumers too, which isn't good for their flourishing either.
What's best to avoid deracinated consumerism for both our groups, is for them to return to their roots in their ancestral lands for their posterity, and for my children to own and cultivate their American birthright. The foreigners brought to our shores should embrace Jeus Christ as should all nations, but they should remain a distinct people to come before the throne of God one day, as should mine.
This side of the New Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Heaven, we are still distinct peoples with distinct political & religious interests. If my neighbors abandon their pagan gods and join the Church then that's a great start to having something in common, but at the scale of the current demographic trends of my area I'm the one destined for assimilation, not them.
I've lived in and visited many predominantly white New Urbanist neighborhoods in blue states with a lively and active front porch culture, but my problem with them was that they were primarily filled with secular liberals. They would often complain to me about how our neighborhood was too white. Many of them actively promoted sinful lifestyles. I had ethnicity in common with them, but none of the traditions, values or rituals that make up the other key ingredients of ethnos. Ultimately these were white people who like you said, weren't looking to preserve the traditions and way of life of our people, but people who would sell our birthright to foreigners for cheaper goods & a bowl of curry.
I'm looking to put down roots for my children in a place I can be confident they have a chance to not be conquered by foreigners, consumerism, socialism or the parent of all these problems, modernity & liberalism. It's a bit like trying to find a unicorn these days! Since I haven't found it, I've been working towards building it. Please wish me luck and pray for me.
I gotta ask tho: why are you so convinced these neighbors are not of your people?
What does it mean to you to have a spiritual path if it does not allow you to see yourself in your neighbor, wherever they are from, whatever their faith or race?
"This side of the New Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Heaven, we are still distinct peoples with distinct political & religious interests. If my neighbors abandon their pagan gods and join the Church then that's a great start to having something in common, but at the scale of the current demographic trends of my area I'm the one destined for assimilation, not them."
It seems like your faith and journey with God is tied to a particular edition of a particular book. Particular creeds written by man for particular political reasons.
I have some questions though.
What if the Kingdom of Heaven is, to quote a guy, within us? What if the thing holding back the New Jerusalem is not immigration policy, but the scales before our eyes?
What if faith is not about drawing lines between types of people but uncovering connection between all of God's people, regardless of their race or faith?
What if the urge to define who belongs and who doesn't, who is "within" God's Kingdom and who is a "Pagan" does not come from the discernment of the Spirit, but what if this is actually the very thing He asked us to overcome?
Isn't that an easier interpretation of the Good News?
It takes so much energy to pretend that He said the point was for US to separate the wheat from the chaff. Isn't the easier reading to say that this is explicitly HIS job, and our's is to love our neighbor as ourselves? Who are we to say "yeah he was doing a bit when he said that, actually he wanted us to segregate ourselves by race and religion." Isn't it so exhausting to twist scripture to support that? Isn't that exhausting?
And doesn't that make up-zoning not seem to be, perhaps, a crime against God?
Aaaand there you lost me by perverting The Gospel into blank slate liberal modernism.
Credo in unum Deum,
Patrem omnipotentem,
factorem caeli et terrae,
visibilium omnium et invisibilium,
Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum,
Filium Dei unigenitum,
et ex Patre natum, ante omnia saecula
I worship Christ The Son of the Living God; I eat his flesh and drink his blood. I won't be shamed into being conquered, and I won't help you build this modern Tower of Babel.
The Grey Town metaphor from CS Lewis hits different when applied to zoning policy. The musical chairs framing really clarified how ordinances that restrict housing supply aren't just about aesthetics or traffic, they're actively removing seats from the game. I grew up in an area where 'neighborhood character' became code for exclusion, and this piece nails how that comfortable language conceals somethnig darker. The progression from personal convenience to systemic exclusion through zoning regs is what makes NIMBYism uniquely harmful compared to just individual selfishness.
Hell hath an open border, Heaven has a gate.
The great walkable, edifying & dense traditional cities of Christendom were made up of cohesive religious polities and populations. When living in such close proximity, it was necessary that these bonds of ethnos, religio & way of life were tight, as these were the building blocks, not the disruptors, of real culture and the enriching public realms they made. The lesson of the great Christian cities is not an affirmation of blank slate modernism, but instead it's very refutation. The distinct urban artifacts of the peoples of Christendom tell you the nature and character of the peoples themselves, the very architecture speaks to their unity of religion, custom, ethnos, language & tradition. It is from this physical & metaphysical cohesion that we can tell an Etruscan Settlement from a Roman settlement, or a Lombardian village from a Germanic village. In the larger cities there are great examples of foreign quarters, but they are just that, colonies of a foreign people in a foreign land, distinct to them and their way of life. Such quarters can only exist for the good of both parties when the host body is healthy and cohesive, and we shouldn't underestimate the tension and discord that having such quarters sewed. (I think of the tensions between the Byzantines and Venetians in Galata for example... it was certainly economically advantageous but was a source of centuries of strife & tragedy). There is something to be said for a crossroads city, but there is also something to be said for a shire. I ask you, where can Americans build their shire?
We will always have New York, but must Galena, Illinois or Nantucket Island become a New York too?
Americans deserve their own dense walkable polities emblematic of their traditions, for themselves and their posterity. Only then can they host a few other choice peoples at a time for their assimilation. These are the hearths of tradition from which a life of charity springs.
Where can I take my children to raise them in a distinctly American, distinctly Christian and dare I say even Catholic way of life? We the young Christian men of the west are looking for hometowns to raise our children in with the cohesion our parents naturally enjoyed and finding it almost impossible. We are already deracinated; we are looking for roots.
We are looking for something, anything, to find in common with our neighbor.
Air dropping foreign brothers and sisters into a cohesive polity doesn't enrich it for either group & sews the seeds of discord & deracination for both. If there is any hope of newcomers being assimilated into an American way of life, then the host body cannot be overwhelmed, the original people and their traditions must first be established healthy, dominant, and secure.
NIMBY's suspect that urban density is a globalist plot to destroy their neighborhoods, and your professed attitude here proves their point. We would have a much easier time selling density to Americans if they knew it was actually for their own children to start homes and form community bonds & roots of tradition. Instead, you are proving their fears by insisting we fill every potential starter home with a refugee from a far-off nation of people who haven't lived alongside them since days of the Tower of Babel.
Inner-city crime and mass immigration have driven Americans to the suburbs. If you insist on inflaming those societal disruptors out of a false sense of Christian charity, you will keep American NIMBYS clinging zealously to their plastic disposable auto-sprawl.
I do think Americans can overcome their NIMBYism and start forming small dense polities again, with wide ranges of housing types to help out different ages and incomes, but only if they are allowed to gatekeep their distinctly American towns with gates & walls akin to those of the glorious & zealous Christian cities of old Christendom.
God Bless.
You raise a lot of compelling points. You should read the New Testament, it answers pretty much all your concerns. Check out the book of Matthew, it's really well written. Matthew 25:35 is bars. If youre more into the oldies tho, Hebrews 13:2 is a classic.
Great news, I've actually been part of a Gospel of Matthew Bible Study for the last 4 months! Let me just jot down your observations here so I can add them to my notes...
Matthew 25:35 "(I was) a stranger and you welcomed me"= We can't have a real country
Hebrews 13:2 "Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels" = Being demographically conquered is angelic
Thanks man, these are great insights! Let me know if you've got any more winners.
Look, I'll meet you halfway here because I think you're actually onto something, just backwards.
"We are already deracinated; we are looking for roots." Yeah man. That's real. The alienation is real. The loneliness is real. The "where do I raise my kids in actual community" thing is a genuine crisis and not enough people take it seriously.
But here's where your diagnosis gets weird: the dense walkable neighborhoods in America that still have block parties and porch culture and abuelas who know everyone's business? Those are disproportionately immigrant neighborhoods. The "plastic disposable auto-sprawl" you're grieving? That was the escape from diversity. White flight was a self-own. You're describing a wound and blaming it on the people who didn't inflict it.
The "cohesion your parents naturally enjoyed" wasn't destroyed by refugees. It was destroyed by the racism in the GI Bill, redlining, suburban zoning, car dependency, and the decision to build communities around consumption rather than proximity. These were projects of the white Christian majority. The call is coming from inside the house.
You're looking for roots. I get it. But you're describing a crisis of capitalism and diagnosing it as a crisis of demographics. Gates won't grow roots. They just keep you lonely with better aesthetics.
You may be surprised to learn that I agree with you. Really, not in jest. Though... I suspect we have different interpretations of to whom the racism flowed in postwar planning. In any case:
I'm angrier at white boomers who have insisted on being the "end of history" than I am at my Pakistani neighbor whose kids ride scooters with mine in the alley behind our townhouse every weekend. I'm more upset with the urbanist author of this post who wants to flood any new townhouse we build with foreign refugees, than I am with any of my neighbors actually on my row of predominantly foreigner inhabited townhomes.
They' just doing what's in the interest of their own peoples, which is not in my interest, my children's interest or the interest of my people. My neighbors to the best of my knowledge are not bad people, and they deserve to be treated with respect. But they are not of my people, and I'm not of theirs. While they are my neighbor though I will and do treat them with Christian charity, and I do my best to make friends with them (though it's hard when you have literally nothing in common). The politics of my area will, and already has, shifted towards extracting wealth from me and my people and redistributing it to them. They're not here to assimilate, or flee persecution, they're here for stuff. Unfortunately, in time it will probably turn them into deracinated consumers too, which isn't good for their flourishing either.
What's best to avoid deracinated consumerism for both our groups, is for them to return to their roots in their ancestral lands for their posterity, and for my children to own and cultivate their American birthright. The foreigners brought to our shores should embrace Jeus Christ as should all nations, but they should remain a distinct people to come before the throne of God one day, as should mine.
This side of the New Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Heaven, we are still distinct peoples with distinct political & religious interests. If my neighbors abandon their pagan gods and join the Church then that's a great start to having something in common, but at the scale of the current demographic trends of my area I'm the one destined for assimilation, not them.
I've lived in and visited many predominantly white New Urbanist neighborhoods in blue states with a lively and active front porch culture, but my problem with them was that they were primarily filled with secular liberals. They would often complain to me about how our neighborhood was too white. Many of them actively promoted sinful lifestyles. I had ethnicity in common with them, but none of the traditions, values or rituals that make up the other key ingredients of ethnos. Ultimately these were white people who like you said, weren't looking to preserve the traditions and way of life of our people, but people who would sell our birthright to foreigners for cheaper goods & a bowl of curry.
I'm looking to put down roots for my children in a place I can be confident they have a chance to not be conquered by foreigners, consumerism, socialism or the parent of all these problems, modernity & liberalism. It's a bit like trying to find a unicorn these days! Since I haven't found it, I've been working towards building it. Please wish me luck and pray for me.
Thanks for replying in good faith, God Bless!
Word! Speaking of Pagan Gods, I'd love to see your results to this survey: https://sites.google.com/view/deityquizticle/quiz
I gotta ask tho: why are you so convinced these neighbors are not of your people?
What does it mean to you to have a spiritual path if it does not allow you to see yourself in your neighbor, wherever they are from, whatever their faith or race?
"This side of the New Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Heaven, we are still distinct peoples with distinct political & religious interests. If my neighbors abandon their pagan gods and join the Church then that's a great start to having something in common, but at the scale of the current demographic trends of my area I'm the one destined for assimilation, not them."
It seems like your faith and journey with God is tied to a particular edition of a particular book. Particular creeds written by man for particular political reasons.
I have some questions though.
What if the Kingdom of Heaven is, to quote a guy, within us? What if the thing holding back the New Jerusalem is not immigration policy, but the scales before our eyes?
What if faith is not about drawing lines between types of people but uncovering connection between all of God's people, regardless of their race or faith?
What if the urge to define who belongs and who doesn't, who is "within" God's Kingdom and who is a "Pagan" does not come from the discernment of the Spirit, but what if this is actually the very thing He asked us to overcome?
Isn't that an easier interpretation of the Good News?
It takes so much energy to pretend that He said the point was for US to separate the wheat from the chaff. Isn't the easier reading to say that this is explicitly HIS job, and our's is to love our neighbor as ourselves? Who are we to say "yeah he was doing a bit when he said that, actually he wanted us to segregate ourselves by race and religion." Isn't it so exhausting to twist scripture to support that? Isn't that exhausting?
And doesn't that make up-zoning not seem to be, perhaps, a crime against God?
Aaaand there you lost me by perverting The Gospel into blank slate liberal modernism.
Credo in unum Deum,
Patrem omnipotentem,
factorem caeli et terrae,
visibilium omnium et invisibilium,
Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum,
Filium Dei unigenitum,
et ex Patre natum, ante omnia saecula
I worship Christ The Son of the Living God; I eat his flesh and drink his blood. I won't be shamed into being conquered, and I won't help you build this modern Tower of Babel.
I will pray for you though, God Bless. :)