CNU Diary 2025: Weekend in New England

This way to the party!

Wednesday, June 11

The 33rd Congress for the New Urbanism is underway, this year in Providence, Rhode Island, which makes three new cities for me in three years! Jane and I flew in this afternoon, took transit downtown to our hotel, and joined the assembled Urbanists briefly at the Opening Party at 195 District Park before retreating for a quiet dinner.

The bus was express between the airport and downtown, or as express as could be during rush hour. I had dutifully downloaded the RIPTA Wave app and put money on it, but found it very difficult to use on the bus. The QR code for my "virtual card" kept disappearing! Eventually the driver waved me on. As someone who has used transit in a variety of cities, I think it should be a lot more intuitive to use.

Not an auspicious start to the conference, but fortunately I don't believe in omens.

Oodles of urbanists!

The Congress Tavern (est 1933): Dinner al fresco on a quiet street

Pre-conference psych-up watching John Simmerman and guest ride through Copenhagen! 

Thursday, June 12

CNU President Mallory Baches rang in the conference 
by recalling its first principles

Today's walking tour celebrated the extensive work in downtown (a.k.a. Downcity) Providence done by Cornish Associates. Since 1999 they have rehabilitated 17 buildings, creating 438 apartments, while retaining about 275,000 square feet of commercial space.

Inside #312, the only vacant unit out of 97
at 239 Westminster Street (built 1873, rehabbed 2005)

Lobby display honors its past as a department store

Green roof at 239 Westminster Street,
"the centerpiece of our downtown portfolio"

186 Union Street, another in the Cornish portfolio

80 Washington Street, with historic sign

The Nightingale, 100 Mathewson Street, occupies most of a city block
 and includes 143 apartments and a Japanese deli on the first floor

As a result, downtown Providence has some great streets.

200 block of Westminster Street

To think this could all have been bulldozed 60 years for "urban renewal." Happily for us, Providence in the 1960s lacked the money needed to execute their plan!

One of Downcity's many fans!

At the end of the tour, Cornish founder Buff Chace wondered if there really could ever be a playbook for new/small developers such as they used to be. He described their developments proceeding with a lot of "Band-Aids and glue," and while outside financial capital and historic tax credits certainly easier to get, city politics may be no easier to navigate. They are currently being sued by the City of Providence over a deal with a previous mayor to tax their apartments at a lower rate than the standard commercial property tax charged to all downtown properties.

The day began with the keynote address, shared by architect Carl Elefante of Quinn Evans and Shin-pei Tsay, who heads the City of Boston's Office of New Urban Mechanics. They struck the optimistic notes the Congress needed, while reminding us of the continued challenges before us. Elefante proclaimed a "relevance revolution" in the 21st century, where "every problem and solution is related to urban form.... We have to accomplish it, or we're going to have problems." Tsay noted the recent creation of her position was in response to the complexity of city policy making in the face of climate, economic, public trust, and justice challenges. 

slide from Tsay's presentation

Moderator Matt Lambert, chair of the CNU Board of Directors, tried to steer the conversation towards the chosen theme of metropolitan coherence, while quoting "a guy in a blue blazer" at last night's cocktail party: CNU has never been about grand slams; it's about bunts and singles.

I also attended a panel on walkable redesign presented by Celeste Frye and Melissa Lee of Public Works Partners. They discussed projects from three different towns in New York. I found myself in a small group with urbanists from New Mexico and Texas, who marveled that they were able to work so productively with the state Department of Transportation. I wonder if they were able to sell their projects to the public because the public already felt pressed by an influx of population. Neither Cedar Rapids nor Santa Fe is so pressed, and San Antonio accommodates theirs through sprawl.

In the evening we attended a reception honoring the publication of The Art of the New Urbanism...

Victor Dover speaks before a picture from the book

...before heading to another quiet dinner in lieu of the CNU pub crawl.

Friday, June 13

This is my third in-person CNU, and at each one I've done a bike ride. This year's ride was unusual because it was less about infratstructure than about development, specifically development in Olneyville, a historically poor neighborhood of Providence that long ago hosted a vibrant milling industry.

Olneyville is the darker part of Ward 15;
the conference is in the lighter part of Ward 1

The tour was hosted by Kurt Teichert...

...senior lecturer at Brown University's Institute for Environment and Society. Maybe two dozen of us rode along.

Because of the tour's focus, we spent a lot of time on streets. Hence it was the most awkward of the three rides, in terms of interactions with motor vehicles. We did sample the lovely Greenway along the Woonasquatucket River.

trail sign by Riverside Park

Recently constructed, one of the trail's objectives was to connect nondriving Olneyville residents to jobs downtown, though (just like Charlotte) that final step is still in process.

on-street bike and bus lanes, downtown

awkwardly twisty ramp by Providence Mall

redevelopment of former steel factories

Woonasquatucket River from trail

Woonasquatucket Greenway by Donigian Park
(formerly dubbed "Needle Park" but has benefited
from infusion of investment in the area)

The Greenway occasionally is linked by regular streets, creating some awkward intersections.

Delaine Street at Manton Avenue

Development in Olneyville has not created large-scale gentrification, but there are nonetheless contested spaces, such as the Atlantic Mills Space, which currently hosts artists and small businesses, as well as meetings of the Olneyville Neighborhood Association...

The Atlantic Mills (built 1863), 120 Manton Ave

..., but maybe not for much longer as we heard from the president of the tenants' union.

dam at Riverside Park has a fish ladder,
sadly rendered inoperable by 2024 storm

affordable housing constructed on Sheridan Street
by the Greenway

interior, Center for Resilience, 249 Menton Avenue,
serves as Olneyville community center

soccer game, Joslin Playground, 60 Kossuth Street

Once back from the bike trip, I checked out Bolt Coffee...

Bolt Coffee is in another Cornish development

...where I met one of my fellow bikers who is from Detroit. I bought The Nature of Our Cities (Mariner, 2024) and The Art of the New Urbanism (Wiley, 2025, mentioned above) at the Symposium Books shop--expect reviews soon!--and attended a panel on entrepreneurship featuring four owners of small consultancies, hosted by Mike Lydon, author of Tactical Urbanism. Then I heard Jonathan F.P. Rose, author of The Well-Tempered City (Harper Wave,2016), give the day's closing keynote.

Rose has something of the futurist about him, and his call for innovations and "big vision" to prepare us for the future had some jargon to it. He called at a couple junctures for systems of mutual aid and mutual support to emerge as insurance and federal assistance are exhausted.

Trinity Brewhouse: We were seated just inside
that window

In the evening we went to a meetup at Trinity Brewhouse cohosted by CNU Midwest, CNU Michigan, and CNU Ontario. We met a bunch of people from Ohio, so it was good I had Jane (who lived her first 22 years in the Buckeye State) with me.

Saturday, June 14

No Kings Day protest at Rhode Island State House,
looking from Smith Street

Today America's narcissistic and very anti-urbanist President hosted a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., at a cost of nearly $50 million, not counting streets that will have to be repaired, inconvenience to residents, and the military's embarrassment at being dragged into a political stunt. This, along with the assassination of a Minnesota legislator and her spouse last night, the assault on U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) by a Cabinet member's security detail, and masked marauders preying on Hispanic workers, make it look like the day of "might makes right" has arrived in America.

Happily, hundreds of No Kings Day protests were organized around the country, including one at the Rhode Island State House, a short (though not easy) walk north of the conference site. We milled about among the crowd, which must have numbered in the thousands, and which was cheerful and peaceful throughout. Americans are going to be a long time repairing the damage Trumpism has done to our communities, but I'm encouraged by the spirit I saw today.

View of the crowd from next to the State House

Speaking of restoring communities, I started my day at the morning main stage talk shared by Erin Barnes of Main Street America and Mindy Fullilove, a social psychologist and author of Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All (New Village, 2020). Both acknowledged widespread public pain, while commending creative community-building efforts of all kinds. Then I attended a panel reporting on efforts in New Orleans to reconnect Claiborne Street, part of which was yawmped by I-10 back in the day, resulting in damage to the mostly black community, public health, and history.

Jennifer Hurley, incoming CNU board chair, at the closing session

The conference rang down with a late afternoon closing session looking back on this gathering, and looking forward to next year, when CNU34 will be held at various sites around Northwest Arkansas. That region includes Bentonville, home of Wal-Mart; Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas; and I trust Springdale, home of the Northwest Arkansas Naturals baseball team. It should be an unusual CNU: representatives from that local committee noted that it's not a traditional city, and is heavily auto-dependent. (Their promotional video showed three giant parking lots in the first minute!) So despite impressive rates of population growth, they invite some urbanist wisdom. Of course, Holy Mountain will be on the scene with all the news as it happens.

SEE ALSO: 

Addison Del Maestro, "Participating in the City or Consuming It?" The Deleted Scenes, 16 June 2025

Robert Steuteville, "Landmark Plan Guides Downtown Revival," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 5 June 2025

LAST YEAR: "CNU Diary 2024: Restorative Urbanism," 15 May 2024

Film review: "1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture"

Coming soon: Day by day reports from the Congress for the New Urbanism. Check back often... don't miss a paragraph!

Source: lgbtq.yale.edu

1946, a documentary film made in 2022 by Sharon "Rocky" Roggio, refers to the fateful decision by the committee producing the Revised Standard Version of the Bible to render two Greek words in I Corinthians 6:9 as the single word "homosexuals," thus including gays and lesbians with "the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers" and others as the "unrighteous [who] will not inherit the kingdom of God." I saw her film at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids.

Watching "1946" at St. Stephen's Cburch

1946 is not about the translation itself, the origins of which remain mysterious even in the committee's archives at Yale University, but about those of us who live in its aftermath. We meet Roggio herself, a lesbian who struggles to maintain her family relationship even as her father becomes a prominent anti-gay preacher; Kathy Baldock, whose dogged research provides the basis for the film's argument; Ed Oxford, a gay theology scholar who works with her; and Davis S., whose 1959 letter documented the committee's error, prior to a long career as a pastor in the United Church of Canada. Each suffers some impacts from the dominant theological interpretation.

Their inquiries are supported throughout the film by a number of biblical scholars, most memorably Rabbi Steven Greenberg, author of Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Wisconsin, 2004), whose reflection on the phrase "Fuck you" I will be pondering for a long time.

By the time (1969) the RSV committee, spurred by Davis S.'s criticism, voted to change their translation from "homosexuals" to "sexual perverts," the horse was out of the barn. Other versions of the Bible, like the New International Version and the Living Bible, continued to follow the RSV's use of "homosexuals," and today are in much wider use than the RSV and its successor versions. In fact, according to the film, the Living Bible added five more references to "homosexuals" that don't appear in the RSV.

My third grade presentation Bible, Revised Standard Version

The scholars walk us through the context that is often lost when people quote other Biblical passages that have been used to condemn homosexuality: the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 19 with its echo in Judges 19, a series of verses in Leviticus 18 and 20 known as "the clobber verses," Romans 1:26-27. They argue that the verses condemn sexual exploitation and/or decadent living, not to same-sex relationships.

The personal focus of the film, even as it works through the minutiae of biblical translation and interpretation, is essential. As I wrote concerning Pope Francis a few days ago, so much changes when we make the subject people rather than rules. 1946 clearly shows the damage done by biblical interpretation that casts out gays and lesbians. I don't know, however, that they make the case that the committee "shifted culture" with their decision. As another viewer at St. Stephen's--it was Jonathan Ice, in case you happen to know him--noted, "Homophobia was not invented in 1946." 

But the committee's chosen language was certainly handy in the 1970s when the burgeoning gay rights movement met with backlash. It was 1972, for example, when the United Methodist Church added a statement that homosexuality was "incompatible" with Christian teaching to its Book of Discipline. The 1970s saw the emergence of the Moral Majority, Christian Broadcasting Network, National Christian Action Coalition, and other organizations that the Republican Party led by Ronald Reagan skillfully wove into its electoral coalition. They had the RSV language to draw on, but orthodox Christians and political opportunists probably could have made just as much hay with previous constructions.

I don't know, either, how many minds will be changed by 1946. Textual criticism of the Bible has been suspect in a lot of believers' eyes since its emergence in the latter half of the 19th century. However, I think Sharon Roggio's careful presentation provides a path to reconciliation for those who are increasingly troubled by what they've been taught the Bible says. It surely provides assurance to Christians, like young Sharon and young Ed Oxford, who feel cast out of the presence of God by their sexuality.

So, what did English-language Bibles say before 1946? Fortunately, I have a small collection of my family's pre-RSV Bibles. Here's how they render I Corinthians 6:9-10.

Both my mom and my mother-in-law received presentation Bibles in the King James Version:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

My dad received the Standard American edition of the Revised Version (1901), which varied only slightly from the original King James Version but with possible significance:

Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men...

My copy of The Bible: An American Translation (1935) was formerly owned by my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Margaret:

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not have any share in God's kingdom? Do not let anyone mislead you. People who are immoral or idolaters or adulterers or sensual or given to unnatural vice or thieves or greedy--drunkards, abusive people, robbers--will not have any share in God's kingdom.

The oldest non-KJV translation I found at my church's library was A New Translation by James Moffatt (1935 edition):

What! Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the Realm of God? Make no mistake about it, neither the immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor catamites nor sodomites nor thieves nor the lustful nor the drunken nor the abusive nor robbers will inherit the Realm of God.

"Catamites" are, it turns out, the victims of homosexual pedophiles. Based on the scholarship in 1946, that is a worse translation of the Greek than the RSV.  

Whatever the translation you're consulting, if you want to find the whole population of gays and lesbians on those lists, you'll find them, however uncharitable your quest. As for the "clobber verses," Leviticus spends at least as much time on menstruating women than it arguably does on homosexual men (not lesbians, interestingly). "If a man lies with a woman during her period, and uncovers her nakedness, he has laid bare her flow, and she has laid bare her flow of blood; both of them shall be cut off from their people" (Lev. 20:18, NRSV). Any attempt to make that the foundation of a doctrinal schism, such as the United Methodists lately have experienced, would be ridiculous. If we as a society can get used to the idea that some of us menstruate, we can get used to the idea of same-sex relationships.

SEE ALSO: "Film Review: Stonewall Uprising," 28 June 2015

"1946" official website: 1946 | The Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture

Movie trailer (1:22):

10th anniversary post: Laudato si'

Pope Francis, who died earlier this year

One of them, an expert in the law, asked [Jesus] a question to test him: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22: 35-40)

Way back in 2005, when Benedict XVI became Pope after the death of John Paul II, I expressed ambivalence to a friend about the new Pope's reputation for orthodoxy. The friend responded something to the effect that the Roman Catholic Church has its own imperatives, and since I'm not Catholic (true), it's really not my business.

I don't remember much from Benedict's eight-year papacy, but the emergence of his successor as a world leader of the first rank showed something I at least was not seeing in Benedict. Ten summers ago I eagerly devoured Laudato si' (Praise Be to You), Francis's second and best known encyclical, and later would read The Name of God is Mercy (Random House, 2016), which accompanied his declaration of 2016 as an International Jubilee of Mercy.

The revolutionary nature of Francis's papacy can certainly be overstated, as indeed can Benedict's orthodoxy. What made Francis such a consequential figure for Catholics and non-Catholics alike was not a shift in doctrine but a shift in emphasis, away from rules and towards caring. He spent many of the early sections leading up to a declaration that God has a "loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance" (para 76). Each human has a duty of care to every other human and to the natural world. None of his recent predecessors, whom he cites along the way, would have disagreed with that proposition, but by centering it in his ministry Pope Francis became such a consequential figure.

Pope Francis also centered the quality of mercy in his ministry; in calling for a Jubilee of Mercy, Francis argued that mercy is the paramount value of the Christian faith, and the major way in which God's followers manifest God in the world. 

(In my home state of Iowa this week, we're seeing quite a different approach from Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who invoked her "Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" while advocating massive cuts in Medicaid, the federal health care program for poor people (Henderson 2025, Alfaro 2025).)

Becoming Pope brings the opportunity to speak globally as the leader of a substantial body of Christians. No other Christian has a similar position; the fragmented and fractious Protestants have a collective action problem, as for that matter do Muslims. Unfortunately, for many years the loudest Protestant (and Muslim) voices have been angry and prejudiced and clannish, hardly a good witness for a merciful God. (Hence we have Senator Ernst, as mentioned above, or Vice President J.D. Vance claiming that St. Augustine advocated caring less about people not in your immediate family.) 

What Francis was able to do as Pope was to be that good witness for Christianity, often loudly. This is not to be naive about the institutional failings of the Catholic Church, with which Pope Francis struggled, not always successfully. But the overarching message of his papacy was a constant challenge to treat each other well, not overlooking how we design our places. Indeed, among his statements in Laudato si' was this urbanist nugget:

Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape. (para 153)

Subtract Francis's voice from the last 12 years, and who is filling that role, so prominently and consistently and persistently?

So, from this non-Catholic, thank you to Pope Francis for twelve years of world leadership, and much joy in whatever the afterlife brings.

Pope Leo XIV (Wikimedia commons)

To the new Pope, Leo XIV, you have big shoes to fill, as I don't need to tell you. May your ministry, in spite of all administrative demands, continue to center love and mercy in your message to the world! And may your hometown White Sox return to winning ways soon.

SEE ALSO: Willemien Otten, "A New Pope, A New Dawn," Sightings, 29 May 2025