Justice in the World Today

 

Hope he gets some of that coffee:
Statue of Thucydides in Vienna, Austria

(7/31/2026) A long time ago, according to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE), a delegation from Athens went to the burg of Melos to demand its surrender. Melos, which was trying to stay neutral in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, resisted. The Athenians offered to argue it out with them, but refused to listen to arguments about justice. Justice, they said, was only for powers of equal strength, while weaker cities had to obey the commands of the weak.

Thucydides' rhetorical purpose in this conversation has been debated (cf. Fisher 2026), but one common interpretation is that democratic Athens had in its pride lost the moral bearings that were a source of its strength, presaging their catastrophic defeat in the war. Justice towards the weak, it seems, is an obligation of the strong. Moreover, philosophers from Plato to the Framers of the U.S. Constitution treat justice as a social condition rather than individual choice.

Justice in the Bible

If that was indeed Thucydides' argument, it would certainly be a Biblically-based conclusion. References to justice in the Hebrew Bible make clear that (a) it is one of God's fundamental expectations for human behavior, and (b) God repeatedly finds those in power failing to treat the weak justly. Here, for example is Amos, who explicitly mentions ill treatment of the poor as one thing that is pissing God off:

For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins--you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate... I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5: 12, 21-24, NRSVUE)

Micah and Isaiah sound similar themes: Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:17). 

There's less of this in the New Testament, where, for example, Joseph is trying to be an individual "just man" (Matthew 1:19, RSV) when his first instinct upon learning of Mary's pregnancy is to get rid of her without subjecting her to public disgrace. But there's Jesus's condemnation of the collective religious leadership which "neglect justice and the love of God" (Luke 11:42, NRSVUE).

Justice in the World Today

So, our most ancient understandings of justice tell us that, in assessing the state of justice in the world today, we should look to the well-being of the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, and other socially marginalized people. Do they have access to the things they need in life? The record is mixed, which may be news to those who tend towards either gloom or cockeyed optimism.

1. Substantive Justice

The aspect of justice that most directly affects the weak is substantive or distributive justice, in which everyone gets what they deserve--not necessarily equal portions, because people differ in all sorts of relevant ways. Here it's good to attend to Nicholas Kristof, who can be as gloomy as anybody, but whose annual end-of-the-year column reminds us of the progress our species has made. "Measured by child mortality, education, nutrition or women's rights, we humans are probably in the best decade in the past 300,000 years," he wrote in 2025, even as tyrants were waging wars and Elon Musk had eviscerated the U.S. Agency for International Development.

• Infant mortality increased over the previous year, but still was less than half what it had been in 2000
• Malnutrition continued to decline, though the rate of decline had slowed
• Literacy worldwide had reached 88 percent
• Deaths from drug abuse in the United States declined 30 percent since 2023
• Public health research had produced a new HIV drug, gene editing against sickle cell anemia, and possibly was close to being able to regrow limbs
• Solar energy is increasingly accessible, and batteries are close behind

The State of the Nation report, produced by the Murphy Institute at Tulane University, is America-centric but contains a lot of good information about other countries. They find the United States remains ahead of 98 percent of other countries in terms of other countries, and is also a leader in education, physical health, and violence reduction. However, we're declining on citizenship and democracy (only 33rd percentile in belief in democracy), life satisfaction, and mental health (only 11th percentile in depression and anxiety). While the U.S. remains high on environmental conditions, physical health (57th percentile in child mortality), and civil liberties, other countries are progressing more quickly. So it's a mixed bag, with a lot of progress in other countries, with some declines as well. The report's authors are unsure whether American decline in some areas is in spite of our economic growth, or connected to how that growth has been distributed.

2. Procedural Justice

Another important aspect is procedural justice, not just because we like the rule of law and respect for individual rights (which we do), but because corruption and arbitrary government limit progress and, particularly for the less-well-connected, opportunity. Freedom House's Freedom in the World report for 2025 shows the vast majority of people live under governments that are rated Not Free or Partly Free. Autocracy is asserting itself all over the world, "usually at the expense of minority groups, democratic activists, and a range of other perceived enemies." Freedom House analyzes the "real-world" freedom enjoyed by individuals, rather than what might be stated in the constitution. Assessment

is done by a combination of in-house analysts and country specialists. If you're curious, the United States rates 81 points out of 100, which puts it in the "free" category. However, it lost three points since 2024 and eight points since 2016.

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025 shows increasing public sector corruption worldwide: the global average is at a record low of 42 (out of 100, with higher being better on this measure), with more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, and 31 countries scoring significantly lower than they did in 2012. Corruption remains a serious threat in every part of the world. Unlike Freedom House, Transparency International collects their data from other sources, specifically 13 surveys of corruption done by agencies including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. The U.S. is tied for 29th best of 182 countries, scoring 64 out of 100, down one point from 2024 but lost11 points since 2017.

Conclusion

I continue to find the annual January celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in my town meaningful, because it's a chance for the entire community to rededicate ourselves to making good on the promise of "justice for all." Pete Saunders (2026) listed a number of discriminatory public and quasi-public policies in the post-Jim Crow era, some still in full flower today: aggressive policing, exclusionary zoning, blockbusting, inadequate local public funding, retail redlining, and predatory lending. There is a lot of work to be done to build just cities, beginning with recognizing our common humanity and hence our mutual situation. As Dr. King said in his 1963 letter from jail to clergy in Birmingham, Alabama, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

--JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

SEE ALSO: "Roll Down Justice: MLK Day 2026," 20 January 2026

Cherokee Trail update

 

You can get there from here!

The Cherokee Trail, which eventually will run all across the west side of Cedar Rapids, is complete between Cherokee Park and Morgan Creek County Park. The next step is to go east out of Cherokee Park, across Edgewood Road to the intersection of Westwood Drive and F Avenue NW. According to the Linn County Trails Association, work continues in the City of Cedar Rapids to determine the specific route the trail will take, while awaiting funding from the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization. Unfortunately, the MPO has not been encouraging on that score ("June 2026 Trail News" 2026).

On a recent sunny weekday, I encountered a few cyclists as well as some walkers; they seemed comfortable, although there currently are few sources of shade, at least not in the middle of the day. Even in Cherokee Park, the effects of the 2020 derecho are noticeable. (I also encountered precisely no pit bulls on my hike, although there were reports that two had run away and were loose in the area.) 

For the time being, the trail starts at the eastern edge of Cherokee Park, a small but delightfully unique park located at Johnson Avenue and Midway Drive NW. A paved trail supplements an older gravel trail that goes completely around the park on either side of a little creek. That gives you three options for crossing the park. 

The paved trail crosses a bridge on its way out of the park...

west edge of Cherokee Park

...crosses Wiley Boulevard (with the help of a new crossing signal), and runs alongside a residential neighborhood. A few steps or turns of the wheel get you to Jacolyn Park, which has a new play area...

Jacolyn Park

...and a restroom. Here the separated trail ends, and the Cherokee Trail follows Gordon Avenue for several blocks.

Cherokee Trail on Gordon Avenue NW

Gordon Avenue is officially designated a bicycle boulevard, for which it qualifies by the low traffic volume, gentle roundabouts like the one depicted above, and frequent reminders on signs and the pavement.

Bicycle boulevard stencil, Gordon Avenue

People's Church (Unitarian-Universalist) moved out here from downtown several years ago. 

People's Church is located on the bicycle boulevard

Gloria Dei Lutheran and Cedar Hills Community Church are also located along the Cherokee Trail, for Christians seeking to arrive at their house of worship by a humbler conveyance than an SUV.

The bicycle boulevard turns right off Gordon Avenue onto Sharon Lane...

...which leads into Cherry Hill Park, where the paved trail resumes.

entering Cherry Hill Park off Sharon Lane

The trail winds through the park, running along the north edge of the large swimming pool.

There's a fix-it station right before you get to Stoney Point Road.

There's no signage at Stoney Point Road...

...but taking the right fork leads to a crossing with warning lights, which leads to E Avenue, which leads to Morgan Creek Park.

On E Avenue there's the choice of a bike lane
or parallel paved trail

In the park, it becomes the Morgan Creek Trail...

...which winds through the park...

...as far as 80th Street, where it turns north and runs parallel to the street, continuing as far as Covington Road (F Avenue in Cedar Rapids). The Linn County Trails Association anticipates the Iowa Department of Transportation will authorized bids for constructing the 1.7 mile stretch between Covington Road and the Cedar River, with construction happening in 2027. The bridge over the river may take longer ("June 2026 Trail News" 2026).

SEE ALSO: "Riding the Districts 2023," 12 June 2023

Post No. 650: Blogging as a vocation, or whatever this is

Hickok Hall at Coe College, where your humble
and mostly retired blogger wrote this post

I've been out of full-time teaching for two years now, which has left me with more time to read and write. This is a good thing! I write a lot--journals, songs, letters, blog posts. I seem to need to write, and I am grateful to you for reading and responding.

Blogging on Holy Mountain is what passes for work in my life these days, judging from the time I spend doing it as well as thinking about it when I'm not doing it. Sometimes, like now for example, I return to the academic building where I've had an office since 1990 to do this work. 

What keeps me going, besides an apparent compulsion to write out my thoughts, is the sense that this is a meaningful way for me to contribute to important discussions about the state of our world. The rewards are when I write myself into a better understanding of things and/or when my writing stimulates thoughtful responses from others. I don't need money, but I do occasionally think about moving to a hotter platform like Substack.

Last week in Christian Century, Texas pastor Mike Gaventa wrote about a "crisis of vocation" in the mainline Protestant church. Actually, the phrase he used was "vocational theology," which focuses on the language we use to talk about vocation, but he had plenty to say about vocation itself. His article rang some bells, even though (a) he used vocation in its typical sense of a chosen career, and (b) he was writing specifically about careers in the church. 

Gaventa begins by quoting theologian Frederick Buechner, who wrote in 1973 that "the place God calls you do is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." He suggests this fundamental truth might be amended by: 

1. distinguishing the call from "market-based assumptions about value and social status"
2. seeking "the well-being and best interests of the whole body," often in opposition to the status quo
3. enabling "the doing of gladless work," of which his repeated example is cleaning toilets
4. continued personal discernment, "because God is never done making any of us"

Is it possible to find work that is personally meaningful, but also brings you into community with God and your fellow human beings? (It would be good if it also had decent pay and benefits.) All work, even messy work, has dignity under those conditions.  In the 2023 Wim Wenders movie Perfect Days, Koji Yakusho plays a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo. At first he seems to have a well-ordered life and a beatific attitude that is almost godlike, though in time we find there is dissatisfaction and loneliness and a backstory. Of course, when is there not? 

Perfect Days trailer (1:44)

While at graduate school in the 1980s, I regularly participated in the Wesley Foundation at the university, and for a while served on the church's Pastor-Parish Relations Committee. I remember that the associate pastor in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Wesley Foundation had in her job description the charge to help students identify a sense of mission in their chosen careers. I've often thought about that since, that any career can be a vocation if you consider how you might use your work to serve God. I've also thought, during my career as a college faculty member, that institutions under financial stress must make compromises to sustain themselves, which sometimes call the mission itself into question. I've wondered, in times of high levels of doubt, whether it might be better to make money however you can, and seek a vocation in your off hours.

Well, now I'm in a position where all my hours are off hours. There's a version of retirement in the mass media that makes it sounds like second childhood. But it's not hard to conceive of an alternate version that is a vocation or something much like it, focused on community not financial gain and involving continued personal discernment. And, at least on campus, the skilled and reliable Nick cleans the toilets!

Top posts of the 2020s

Pandemic hearts, April 2020

1. "The Hearts of Cedar Rapids," 11 April 2020
2. "Black Friday Parking 2021," 26 November 2021
3. "The Kind of President Joe Biden Could Be," 3 July 2020
4. "Hy-Vee is a Symptom of a Deeper Problem," 23 May 2024
5. "Eight Things That Make Me Proud in Cedar Rapids," 27 June 2025
6. "What Should Go into Brewed Awakenings?" 31 July 2020
7. "Move More Week Diary," 10 October 2022
8. "Even a Pretty MedQuarter Isn't Right," 12 September 2023
9. "More New Less Bo?" 4 July 2022
10. "Project 2025 and Our Common Life," 19 August 2024

As yet undiscovered posts of the 2020s

Mike Maas, John Korkie, and Carlis Faurot (not pictured)
perform at Maple Syrup Festival

1. "Maple Syrup Time Again," 30 March 2026
2. "Thinking Positively About Marjorie Taylor Greene," 25 November 2025
3. "Riding the Districts 2024," 10 June 2024
4. "Book Review: Palaces for the People," 6 July 2026
5. "Roll Down Justice: MLK Day 2026," 20 January 2026
6. "Train Horns," 6 October 2025
7. "Book Review: City Limits," 5 June 2024
8. "My Grand Day Out: Iowa River Landing and the Peninsula Neighborhood," 9 June 2026
9. "Subterranean Chicago," 9 December 2025
10. "10th Anniversary Post: What's Up in Uptown Marion?" 8 January 2026

SEE ALSO: "Blogging in a World Gone Backwards," 20 June 2025

10th Anniversary Post: The Future of the Suburbs

We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources.--
PETE SAUNDERS

Ten years ago, I was gearing up to teach the next generation of first-year Coe College students about urbanism. Maybe that's why Holy Mountain was full of urbanist basics like cities blowing their stash on big amenities, gentrification, and suburban sprawl. My post on suburbia was full of assumptions that now seem very much of that time. Following Leigh Gallagher's The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013) I expected suburbia to be transformed by increasing economic inequality, consumer preferences for urban living, environmental issues, fiscal issues, corporate clustering, and secular declines in urban crime. 

When I revisited the topic six years later, those assumptions already looked dated. "Since I wrote [the 2016 post], the return to the city appears to have ebbed; it's early to judge, but it's certainly not proceeding at the pace of 2005-2015 (Frey 2022, Cortright 2020). Meanwhile, American society has been shaken by a series of earthquakes" including the Trump administration, Black Lives Matter protests, the pandemic, altered workplaces, economic changes, and climate disasters. There was a trend of suburbs adopting urbanist elements like central squares, small businesses, and bike trails.

Today I read two essays on suburbia, which is indeed transforming, in some places, but very much maintaining its preeminence in American geography. Bill Fulton (2026), an urbanist I admire but not enough to pay for his Substack, answered a question from someone in Texas about the Dallas metropolitan area, which is growing by leaps and bounds, even as "Downtown Dallas specifically is sucking wind" (questioner's wording). This is not what we were asking ten years ago, when McDonald's was moving its headquarters from Oakbrook to Chicago, and CRST moved from the edge of town to downtown Cedar Rapids (Cortright 2016, Smart Growth America 2015). There may be more to this behind the paywall, but the discussion of metro Dallas sounds like we're back to the 1980s, and 2005-2015 never happened.

Addison Del Maestro (2026) examines the housing crisis from the perspective of high-demand, high-price cities. More people seem to want to live in the hottest cities than can fit there, which drives prices up, making them unaffordable. While it's also true that "lots of smaller cities and towns have also seen price increases, because basically all communities pulled back on housing production for a few decades," some cities have features or cultures that attract a disproportionate percentage of the mobile population. I conclude that, while San Francisco prices spiral--their price-to-median-income ratio is over 10!--those who can't afford them retreat to the suburbs, somewhere or other. In Cedar Rapids, you could buy a downtown condo for $400K, or you could pay half that for something 15 minutes' drive away. So, you get some of the amenities of urban living at an affordable price. Note that Del Maestro is still assuming consumer preference for urban amenities.

Pete Saunders (2026), however, argues consumer preferences for new construction are even stronger than those for urban living. He cites a study by economist Kenan Fikri showing that the Economic Innovation Group's measure of the most prosperous neighborhoods--measured a variety of ways, notably not including taxable value per acre--shows the most prosperous are also the newest. Saunders reflects:

Historically, I understand why Americans have always favored new over old. We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources. We have a residential and commercial development investment structure that adheres to the same philosophy that bank robber Willie Sutton used when asked by a reporter why he robs banks: "Because that's where the money is." We can go anywhere. We can do anything. We've put no limit to our desires.

Does it matter where people choose to live? Well, yes it does. This is a blog about public policy, though, not individual ethical choices, and I'm not here to argue that people should never choose to live in low density areas. (Contrast that stance with that of Ross Douthat, cited in Del Maestro's post, who wants to "break up" existing high-demand cities, where it should be said a lot of people also live.) But we should not ignore the social costs of sprawl, particularly on municipal finances and the natural environment (but also community feeling and physical fitness). The future of suburbia seems strong; but will it prove adaptable to big changes coming?

Saunders, again:

In a nation that's prospered with the expansion of suburbia and the Sun Belt, what happens when they feel a tinge of obsolescence? When the five-bedroom, 4,000 square-foot McMansion can't be sold because the nation is getting older and has smaller households? We'll see.

If experience is any predictor, it won't spur a rush back to central cities, but rather to a new version of suburbs. And the most vulnerable will, again, be left in the dust, not to mention the natural world.

ORIGINAL POST: "The Future of the Suburbs," 18 July 2016

SEE ALSO: "The Future of the Suburbs (II)," 8 August 2022. Compare the current versions of the American Prairie Project...

house (Source: drhorton.com)

townhouses (Source: drhorton.com)

...with what they were showing four years ago:

(Source: cedar-rapids.org)

...though even then, to quote Daniel Herriges (2020), "What would you even walk to?"

Book review: Palaces for the People

 

Eric Klinenberg at CNU34

Twenty-first century social infrastructures are already reviving civic life in nations across the planet: public plazas in low-lying cities that double as massive water storage systems during extreme weather events; massive levees and berms that masquerade as bike paths and parks. Americans should have all these things. (Klinenberg 2018: 293)

Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Broadway, 2018), 293 pp.

(7/3/2026) There is supposed to be a theory of human evolution where we humans have since hunter-gatherer days differed in our response to strangers. Some see strangers as inherently dangerous, a threat to our precarious food supply; others see strangers as bringing welcome variety, so we could trade lunches or at least hear new jokes. Both of these perspectives are adaptive--some strangers are dangerous--but decades of auto-centric development has left us with a lack of places to encounter strangers in low-stakes, non-threatening ways. The results include an epidemic of loneliness, physical unfitness, and vulnerability to violent crime, homelessness and climate catastrophes. 

Eight years after the publication of Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg began his keynote address to the Congress for the New Urbanism in Bentonville, Arkansas, last month, with the question: What has happened to the fabric that supports community life? He urged his listeners to "make every project you do work as social infrastructure," whether it's a playground or something less obviously connected, like flood control. We should also fund public libraries, a lot more than we currently are.

Klinenberg grew up in Chicago, and was just about to start graduate school when the deadly 1995 heat wave struck the city. The factors that affected who survived and who didn't, and the factors affecting the geographic distribution of mortality, inspired his field research, and eventually his first book, Heat Wave (University of Chicago Press, 2002). He continues to ask: If sudden natural disasters, as well as the slow corrosive effects of loneliness and despair, have predictable effects, "What conditions in the places we inhabit make it more likely that people will develop strong or supportive relationships and what conditions make it more likely that people will grow isolated and alone?" (2018: 6)

Social infrastructure: The Union (young adult room), 
Cedar Rapids Public Library

Social infrastructure is defined as "the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact," creating the context for individual-level relationships of all levels of intensity. It can take many forms--public institutions, open spaces, privately-owned establishments--but the common element is "people are welcome to congregate and linger" (16). His first example is public libraries (ch. 1), which "do all kinds of unexpected things for surprisingly large numbers of people... by providing free access to the widest possible variety of cultural materials to people of all ages, from all ethnicities and groups" (37). He describes his visits to the New Lots and Seward Park branches in New York City, where he sees the elderly, teenagers, the unhoused, and immigrants in places where they can find meaning and encounter other people. 

Chalkboard in The Union:
The youth have something to say

Chapter two argues social infrastructure is useful for improving public safety, where outcomes of long-term policies in Philadelphia "suggest that place-based interventions (fixing up vacant and abandoned properties, planting trees and grass) are far more likely to succeed than people-based projects" like tougher criminal sentencing and cracking down on petty crime (70).

Chapter three starts at elementary school, spends most of its time at college, and then goes back to the library. Any of these places can serve as community gathering spaces, but that doesn't happen automatically; they also can fail by putting up barriers or designing for institutional efficiency.

School playgrounds can be community gathering spaces,
but only if they're unlocked

One big social change since the publication of this book is that the number of people living on the streets has increased by 50 percent, which may affect the real or perceived ability of the community to gather in these types of spaces.

Chapter four focuses on the public health impacts (opioid addiction, food deserts, isolation especially among the elderly and poor) of glaring failures of social infrastructure. Chapter five highlights the role of sports facilities and teams in bringing together people of different backgrounds, which might be a major reason racists fought so strenuously to keep beaches and pools segregated (and why "boys in girls' sports" is such a potent argument today). The epilogue points out the limits of social media, and other billionaires' moonshots, in doing what simple contact can achieve.

Chapter six on climate change is an extension of the argument. Incredibly, as I write this eight years after this book was published, with heat domes over much of the northern hemisphere, widespread fires and flash flooding, the crew in charge of the American national government still insists there's nothing to see here. Even in 2018, it was undeniable that (a) the climate is changing, (b) its effects fall most heavily on those at the margins of society, and (c) we're going to have to build or rebuild a lot of our infrastructure in order to prepare for this. 

Social infrastructure: The McGrath Amphitheatre,
park and concert venue and flood protection

Klinenberg makes the case for making the new physical infrastructure work as social infrastructure as well, as had been planned along the FDR Drive in New York City:

The berms would block and absorb storm surges when necessary, but their everyday function, as parklands and recreational areas for inhabitants of an especially gray and unpleasant part of an especially gray city, is at least equally as important.... Deployable walls, camouflaged as a series of murals that hang from strong hinges on the ugly underside of the FDR Drive, are another key part of the proposal. Most of the time, the structures, which will be designed by local artists, operate as decorative ceiling panels that enhance the experience of walking beneath the highway, which, lacking good alternatives, thousands of residents do each day. (2018: 202)

Klinenberg makes a strong argument for urbanist design. Loneliness and all its ill effects, physical fitness, political polarization, and vulnerability to crime and climate can all be traced to the lack of social infrastructure. In his 2026 talk, he said that if communities design, build, maintain and program it, democracy and civil society will benefit, and there exists a "palpable sense of possibility" in this moment in history, especially among the young. We surely can do with more public libraries, playgrounds, and plazas (with shade for sure!), if they're done right. The alternative, as he said in Bentonville, is "we are all more likely to hunker down in private places."

(Source: crownpublishing.com)

Pete Saunders, "Preparing for the Climate Migrants," Corner Side Yard, 2 July 2026

Angie Schmitt, "Ross Chapin on How the 'Pocket Neighborhood' Can Address Loneliness," Love of Place, 24 June 2026

Book review: The Space Between

 

Source: bakeracademic.com

Eric O. Jacobsen, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012), 297 pp.

If Jesus's "dwelling among us" means that he lives as we typically do, he would most likely be living in a subdivision at least a few miles from where he might interact with people in a quasi public setting--like a shopping mall or a grocery store. In this case, Jesus would need to own and operate some kind of automobile simply to have the kind of diverse interaction with people that we see him having in the Gospels... Rather than asking, "What would Jesus drive?" I want to ask, "Why must Jesus drive?" (Jacobsen 2012, pp. 207-208)

(6/18/2026) I first read Eric O. Jacobsen's The Space Between in 2015, after hearing him interviewed by Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns podcast. (That interview is here, and a subsequent appearance is here.) Dr. Jacobsen, who has been senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church (ECO) in Tacoma, Washington, since 2007, offers a good introduction to urbanist ideas from a communitarian perspective that is accessible to any reader. It is even more pertinent for his fellow Christians, for whom urbanism is presented as how we live our earthly lives as God intends.

While I've employed his ideas frequently since then, particularly when I would write about the religious architecture awards that used to appear annually in Faith and Form, I have never done a systematic review of this outstanding book. I am rectifying that now.

Dr. Eric O. Jacobsen (from fpctacoma.org)

Jacobsen begins by asserting the core importance of the built environment, which he defines as "the physical location and features of the places where you live, work, worship, and play and the way that the various places in your day relate to one another" (pp. 11-12). We should notice these features, he argues, not just move mindlessly through them on our way to some place from some other place. We should ask ourselves: "Who thought this space through, and what can you discern about their values as you interact with it?" (11). How people and stuff interact in a particular place over time--what he calls enacted space (17)--matters for our experience of community. It matters to a unified kingdom approach to Christian life, in which every human activity, not just the churchy stuff, "can be done in a way that is God-honoring" (21).

Before we get to the urbanism in Parts II and III, Jacobsen presents a sort of theology of the individual in Part I, "Orientation," albeit includes some good pictures of streets by way of example. We are human bodies (ch. 1) in specific places (ch. 2), and are meant to be in loving community with others, not autonomous individuals (ch. 3). Community means "the actual human community in which she has found herself" (89), including both voluntary (church, club, friend group) and geographic (anyone in your immediate proximity) communities, but it's the latter community is too easy to neglect.

The boundedness of place has been an important element in relational development. We know one another more deeply when proximity forces us to interact on a regular basis. The contemporary ease by which we can move from one place to another has tended to pull us further apart from one another, rather than bring us closer. (57-58)

People are bound to fall short of our ideal vision of community because of human sinfulness, so community requires grace. It also requires time, because "we cannot buy community" and "we cannot even build community" (100), because community only happens after sustained engagement. And it requires wisdom, the embedded sort of wisdom that evolved institutions contain, not sudden bursts of seemingly rational efforts to remake those institutions. Hence, urbanism good, modernism not so much (ch. 4, esp. pp. 109-118). Missoula, Montana, was saved from modernist overhauling because it was unable to afford it, and now it's glad it stayed the way it was (pp. 90-92).

This traditional block of downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, is chock full
of "thresholds" connecting buildings with the outdoors

Part II, "Participation," gets into how the built environment affects our lives and life choices. Families become more isolated, both from relatives and from neighbors (ch. 5). Churches (ch. 7) used to be embedded in their surrounding neighborhoods, with doors open to the street, and sometimes served as community monuments; today's insular churches are set away from the street, accessible by large parking lots.

Chapter 6, "Politics," talks about how all this matters for the public realm, beginning with the ongoing skirmishes between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses in 1960s New York City. Jacobs stood for civic virtue as opposed to top-down power for power's sake. "Civic virtue can be thought of as a measure of a person's care for the public realm combined with the local knowledge, organizational skills, and courage necessary to effect positive change in that realm" (159). Any of those four aspects is difficult to muster when the built environment is as dependent on automotive transportation as much of America is today. In this context, he discusses the problems of functional zoning, urban renewal, and visionaries like Le Corbusier. He approvingly quotes from the theoretical final chapter of Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she argues that cities are problems of "organized complexity," much like human bodies. 

This tells us much about how Jacobs understands transformation to take place among people and practices in the city. She sees in ordinary cities a form that is basically good and assumes the ability of residents to enact a kind of self-repair. The city and its neighborhoods occasionally need outsider intervention to fulfill this potential, but for the most part what they need is less rather than more government intervention. (173)

Modernist architect Rem Koolhaas is introduced as a foil to Jacobs, though I have to admit I like the Seattle Public Library. 

Hudson Street, New York City,
where Jane Jacobs lived between 1947 and 1968

In Part III, "Engagement," Jacobsen uses a theological model called critical correlation to analyze our relationship with the built environment. I'm not a theologian, but I feel I was able to follow the argument. He reframes discussions of sustainability away from voluntary abstinence to seeking to achieve good goals for all (ch. 9): human thriving, environmental stewardship, and social justice. These goals can and do conflict in application (see the graphic from Scott Campbell on p. 236), but they are all served by joint efforts by urban communities rather than individual withdrawal. A sense of place (ch. 10) where one belongs is inextricable from one where strangers can become known--in this context he gives a good capsulation of Ray Oldenburg's third place paradigm (pp. 245-246)--which too turns out to be an obligation for Christians and Jews (cf. Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Exodus 23:9ff.). The chapter concludes with a discussion, from several points of view, of the role of beauty in our places.

Jacobsen's book provides an introduction to urbanist ideas for Christians and Jews, rooted in the familiar language of the Bible. For non-religious urbanists, he points to the possibility of cooperation, giving a view of religion that is different from that propounded by the loudest Christian voices out there. For everyone, he provides a second look at our surroundings that we may have taken for granted all our lives, and to consider why auto-dependency may not be serving us well.

Jackson Boulevard, Chicago

What is the future of Iowa's small towns? (II)

The lives we should all be living:
"Texas Two-Step," a movie on the Hallmark Channel,
offers romance and country music in a small town third place
(swiped from hallmarkchannel.com)

(6/16/2026) In my last post, I noted the reputation of the 1990s TV series Friends has as a contributor to the "back to the city" trend earlier in this century, and wondered not only whether that trend has ebbed, but where today's friends are leading. Hannah Nuss, an entrepreneur and speaker at the recent EntreFest put on by NewBoCo, suggested we might spend some quality time pondering an infamous theme of made-for-TV romance movies: the young woman in the big city returning to her small town roots and finding true love and entrepreneurial happiness.

Hannah Nuss presents at EntreFest
(Outrageous laptop borrowed from Robbie Nesmith)

Nuss, of Denver, Iowa, is founder of a shop and a publishing company, both of which are called Local. She cited small town/rural advantages such as low startup costs, low rents, "super-low" cost of living, neighborly culture, and a small enough population that word of mouth spreads faster. She argues that the death of rural Iowa is a "false narrative people accept," and that "entrepreneurship is here" along with the happy endings of all those romance movies where the heroine chooses love over the big city.

Delaney Howell-Goth on stage at the Englert Theater

Also at EntreFest last week, two other female entrepreneurs from small towns touted advantages for business and economic development. Marketer Delaney Howell-Groth (AgCulture Marketing), who farms with her husband near Rhodes, Iowa, said women entrepreneurs are already active enough to create more than half of all jobs created in small towns. Even more people could be shown the way--or the way back, if they've already left--if there were a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem providing access to resources, training, and knowledge, which is what the conference she started, She Creates Rural, aims to be.

Stephanie Grutz presents at EntreFest

A third business owner, Stephanie Grutz, mostly talked about her personal journey, but has just moved the headquarters of her healthcare businesses from Dubuque to Peosta, in part because she lives there, but also because she wants rural residents to have access to the types of therapies more commonly found in larger cities.

The river that ran through these three presentations was the contrast between an overwhelming big city full of action and people and wealth and the perception (illusion?) of economic opportunity, against a small arena with less wealth and fewer people, but a less frantic pace, and a chance for stable and "deep relationships" with the people you do encounter. A smaller, less crowded stage allows a person to be impactful and known. 

Both the movie plot and the death-of-rural paradigm rely on stereotypes, of course, which however exaggerated also reflect some important truths. Lyz Lenz (2026) sees the same phenomenon at work in the popularity of Ballerina Farm, a Utah farm, store, and social media phenomenon created by Hannah Neeleman, a self-styled "trad wife." Lyz notes that the women interviewed by The New York Times "don't want to be Hannah Neeleman, exactly. What they want is a glimpse at an easier life." She continues:

They all seem very aware of what must go on behind the scenes to raise and school all those children while building a business empire and staying thin and breaking bread. But it's that idea of something simple and easier.... A nice husband, a bit of land, some chickens, and some kids? Isn't that so much easier than this modern world, where you sit at a computer and create value for a company that is actively plotting to sell your flesh to AI?

Yes, they're cute, but my laptop smells better
© Copyright Evelyn Simak and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License.

Of course the trad wives and romance movies are selling fantasy, just like Friends, whose characters had an unbelievable Upper East Side lifestyle considering they worked at a coffeeshop.

If the rural young are hearing messages that they must leave to thrive, as our speakers suggested, those messages are landing for a reason. I'm not from a small town, but I'm from a state where small town representatives have run the government for years. And the messages they are bringing from their towns to the state in legislation and executive action pulsate with resentment. They snarl at immigrants, they snarl at transgendered people, they snarl at people who are concerned about the environment. If you are a young person who is different, or seeks a different truth, or whose mind is not slammed shut, these sorts of messages are not encouraging you to do anything but flee.

Back to reality: In a world with only two alternatives, corporate big city overstimulation or quiet old white small town, choosing either is going to be painful, because you'll be required to give up something you value. But are there really only two alternatives? More Americans live in suburbs than any other type of place. I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, with great schools and a big public library. Does no one dream of living in a suburb? When I go back, everything's different and no one knows me. Maybe not.

Prince Street, 2018: Boston's North End neighborhood
is urban without being noisy and frantic

It may be that in the contrast of extremes can be found there's a combination of attributes many Americans desire in their places but have difficulty finding: walkable neighborhoods, deep relationships, a variety of economic opportunities, and a variety of people with interesting perspectives. A few small towns seem to have achieved this, as have a few urban neighborhoods. But the more we as a country rely on cars to get us anywhere, and low prices at big-box stores to get us by, those places will continue to be hard to find, or to build. 

Water Street, 2013: Decorah is small but has 
a great commercial street an easy walk from residential areas

Small towns that can apply urbanism, and celebrate diversity and inclusion, may find themselves the objects of a lot of people's desires. And that, along with the positive examples and mentoring offered by people like our three speakers, would do wonders for their entrepreneurial ecosystems. And "big" cities that create some real neighborhoods will find they too can ride out whatever fantasies the media are selling us, even if their residents aren't handsome cowboys running Christmas tree farms.

SEE ALSO: 

Kiva website for small capital loans

Produce Iowa web site for small town Iowa film makers

ORIGINAL POST: "What is the Future of Iowa's Small Towns?" 3 July 2018

Prairie Patch Farms Llama Experience: 
If you've read this far, you deserve a picture of a llama