Urbanist Formularies

Extended thoughts on discerning our "intellectual subfloors"

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As you know if you’ve been reading me for awhile, one of the things I come back to once in awhile is the question of communication, rhetoric, framing. I’m interested in how we talk about what we advocate for, and how other people hear us. I’m also interested in identifying the exact substantive disagreements at play, both between people in the broad housing/urbanism movement, and between that movement and the median American.

And I’m also interested in the role that really articulating what we believe plays in convincing people. In other words, how many disagreements are down to words, and how many are really down to actual bedrock disagreement?

What I’m sort of doing is applying the idea of ecumenism to urbanism. Ecumenism typically refers to discussions between religious bodies to explore and identify areas of agreement and disagreement. And its results can be very interesting. Bear with me a bit before I get into the urbanism stuff.

Now when I say ecumenism, I’m not talking about a certain slick, intellectually dishonest variety of ecumenism which, I would say, seeks to conceal disagreement by stretching the meaning of words, and settling on statements which can be interpreted in multiple ways.

You can see this at work with some of the Communion hymns used by multiple denominations: hymns that go “look beyond the bread you eat” or “Precious Body, Precious Blood, here in bread and wine”—statements which split the difference on Eucharistic theology and are amenable to a number of different and contradictory theologies. Perhaps they are not unorthodox, per se, but they are, and are intended to be, un-specific. This kind of ecumenism is an effort to identify a lowest-common-denominator which does not actually say anything.

But then there is an ecumenism which does the opposite—which probes the ways in which our divergent customs and language and modes of expression and implied or assumed meanings can conceal agreement.

A fascinating example of this is discussions between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox on one side, and Oriental Orthodox on the other side. This ecumenical effort has yielded—not without some skepticism on both sides—an understanding that the core doctrinal disagreement, over the nature of Christ (one or two natures) was in fact fundamentally linguistic and not substantive.

Here is a pretty solid Catholic source: “Pope Saint John Paul II signed accords with the Coptic Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox (both miaphysite) recognizing that their Christology is currently sound and orthodox – fully in accord with Roman Catholic Christology. The Catholic Church recognizes that the debate was essentially linguistic and political.”

In other words, the divergence in how each body described, and perhaps even understood, the actual fundamental bedrock doctrine created an appearance of the doctrine itself being different. And this was not apparent to either side until both sides interrogated their framings with each other.

They literally did not know they agreed with each other.

Another interesting example is a post-Vatican II 1960s Catholic-Lutheran document on the Eucharist. It ends with this seemingly groundbreaking statement:

On the two major issues which we have discussed at length, however, the progress has been immense. Despite all remaining differences in the ways we speak and think of the eucharistic sacrifice and our Lord’s presence in his supper, we are no longer able to regard ourselves as divided in the one holy catholic and apostolic faith on these two points. We therefore prayerfully ask our fellow Lutherans and Catholics to examine their consciences and root out many ways of thinking, speaking and acting, both individually and as churches, which have obscured their unity in Christ on these as on many other matters.

Elements of this document are a tad simplistic and perhaps even tendentious. For example, on the question of Eucharistic adoration, typically rejected by Lutherans, the Catholics rhetorically walked back the importance of adoration:

Roman Catholics have traditionally reserved the consecrated host for communicating the sick, which, according to the Instruction of May 25, 1967, is the “primary and original purpose” of reservation. The adoration of Christ present in the reserved sacrament is of later origin and is a secondary end. The same Instruction repeats the insistence of the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy that any adoration of the reserved sacrament be harmonized with and in some way derived from the liturgy, “since the liturgy by its very nature surpasses” any nonliturgical eucharistic devotion.

Eucharistic adoration certainly is an optional devotional practice, and not the Sacrament itself. But it is also a little bit more than that, in actual Catholic practice. You can see the very fine line ecumenical dialogue has to walk. It is almost as if the Catholics here said, “Put aside the manner in which Catholicism is popularly practiced, and just look at what the core doctrine says. It says no more than that Eucharistic adoration is acceptable, and that, almost by definition, adoration is merely a sort of extension of the Supper (on which we agree in many respects with the Lutherans).”

This difference of emphasis seems, well, different from “Everyone must kneel at the Corpus Christi procession.” But…is it? It’s fascinating to me how hard it actually is to distill the absolute underlying idea, and nothing else, from its usual rhetorical framings or implementation or trappings or cultural accretions.

Now I’m done with the religious stuff. The point of this exercise is that in many cases, we literally don’t know if we actually disagree or not, because the same fundamental ideas can be framed or expressed in quite divergent ways—which in turn can be based on divergent tacit understandings.

The only way to know what our intellectual subfloor looks like is to ruthlessly strip the rhetorical carpeting—under which we may discover layers and layers of linoleum. Only then, all of that pulled up, will we know if we are truly standing on the same thing.

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Now I want to change pace a tiny bit and wonder what substantive statements you could craft that could act as a sort of “urbanist formulary”: the broadest possible statements which could capture the broadest possible affirmation, without that affirmation being tendentious (“So not like the Anglican Formularies, har har”). How big a tent can we build without tearing the fabric?

Here’s an example. Have you ever seen an urbanist or housing advocate say something like, “Housing is like immigration: just like we shouldn’t have national borders, we shouldn’t have neighborhood ‘borders’ in the form of NIMBYism”? Or have you seen a housing advocate say, “Anybody should be able to live anywhere they want”?

I’ve seen this view articulated: the idea that welcoming new immigrants and welcoming new neighbors are two instances of the same thing. I don’t care for this argument. One, because neither I nor most of the people I try to speak to believe in open borders. And two, because I don’t see these things as inherently being related.

But when I say “I’ve seen this view articulated”….what is this view? Is it a statement of a fundamental idea? Or is it a framing of some underlying idea informed by the language and attitudes of American progressivism, to an extent that the underlying idea is actually being obscured? Potentially, even to those making the argument? Is “both local and national borders are illegitimate” really precisely what the people who say this are intending to say? Is their bedrock claim actually about borders and immigration, or is it about something distinct?

I personally prefer to formulate the idea that neighborhoods should be “open” this way: “Good” neighborhoods are mostly neighborhoods with good access to jobs, which is to say, opportunity. The “right” to live in a “good neighborhood” is really the right to work, and everybody must have the right to work.

Am I saying something substantially different here from “borders are illegitimate and everyone has the right to live anywhere they want”? Some people would think so. I don’t think so. This is what I mean by urbanist ecumenism.

It is very difficult to determine if these are both ways of expressing the same idea, if one is more bedrock or “pure” than other other, or if they are simply different ideas. That is why this exercise is important. We’re not just trying to strip the rhetorical carpet; we’re trying to discern what actually is the carpet, and what is the subfloor. And it is hard!

With this in mind, I’m going to give you a few urbanist priorities and a few different possible ways of stating them. I’m curious how they read to you, and whether you agree that they are all attempts at stating the same underlying principle—or whether what I’ve identified as the underlying principles even are the final layer.

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Neighborhoods should be open to newcomers

• Neighborhood borders are like national borders; both should be as open as possible

• Neighborhoods in which there is high demand to live are neighborhoods with access to economic opportunity; economic opportunity is the right to work; and people have a right to work. Therefore, there is no way to argue that neighborhoods should be “closed” without denying people the right to work

• Access to economic opportunity is so closely tied to the right to work that it must effectively be considered a prerequisite of exercising that right, and therefore places with economic opportunity should be “open”

• Communities/localities have an obligation to keep housing production at pace with the job market

• The housing and market and the job market cannot be arbitrarily severed by overly restrictive zoning/housing policy

Note that even these statements rely on an idea that some people would argue with: that a “nice” neighborhood is basically a “high-opportunity” neighborhood. This is a phrase housing folks use to point out the link between housing and jobs. So you would also have to come to an agreement on the idea that “high opportunity” is a legitimate way to describe “nice” places, and only then even reach the level of discussing what that reality means for the legitimacy of NIMBYism in such places.

People should rely less on cars

• Driving is inherently immoral

• Driving is kind of bad and should intentionally be discouraged or made more difficult

• We need to make it easier for people to walk, bike, or take transit, and because of the geometry of cars and the space they take up relative to the people inside, this may entail as a side effect making it more difficult to drive in some places

• Driving should be a choice—the problem isn’t that people choose to drive, but that the broad transportation system renders it impossible to choose not to drive

Dense, walkable, mixed-use development is good and should be permitted and encouraged

• Cities are climate policy

• Everyone should be able to access everything they need on a regular basis within a 15-minute walk or transit ride

• What we today call “dense, walkable, mixed-use development” is a modern attempt to understand historic urban places, and to restore, given modern conditions, that mode of building human settlements

• Traditional urbanism is essentially what people build except when impeded by codes mandating something else; we don’t need to engineer, but merely “re-legalize” traditional urbanism

All sorts of communities should be open to newcomers of all sorts of backgrounds

• Progressive localities need to build housing so women can access abortion rights and LGBT people can enjoy full civil rights

• Red states need to build housing so families can homeschool, access non-woke education, and enjoy pro-family governance

• No community of any sort anywhere should be effectively closed

Multifamily housing and a variety of housing sizes, types, and options should be encouraged in more places, including in single-family zones

• Housing is racial equity

• More housing options are especially important for minorities, the poor, single women, and LGBT people

• Housing options within communities should exist for people and families at every stage of life, from child to student to single to young couple to family with children to retired

• A community, almost by definition, should be a place in which one single person, in every stage of their life, can find an appropriate and affordable housing option

• A “family-friendly neighborhood” is a neighborhood that can be afforded by an average family. The same for every category of person/people. Whatever housing types meet that definition in a particular place should be built

Urban freeways should be removed

• “There is ‘racism physically built into’ United States highways”, and removing them would be a form of racial reparations

• Urban freeways displaced vulnerable communities and it would be appropriate to undo that damage to communities and to the urban fabric

• Midcentury planners imposed a destructive, revolutionary project on American cities, and we owe it to our communities and our heritage to correct their mistake

• Urban freeways are a sort of conceptual oxymoron, because by definition cities are not merely, or primarily, conduits for passing traffic

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Here is a final issue which is difficult to distill into a single statement, which is ripe for this process of explication: the question of “beauty in architecture.”

In the online discourse around new buildings, you will see some people saying things like “New buildings should be beautiful,” and you’ll see other people—mostly very enthusiastic pro-housing folks—treating that desire with skepticism or snark. I think the people who care about beauty think that the people resisting it are saying “Build ugly buildings!”

I think what they’re actually saying is something more like “beauty is a complicated concept that can descend into being some kind of signifier of reactionary politics like the rightwing “statue accounts” on Twitter, or as a fig leaf for plain old NIMBYism, so I’m not going to touch those arguments.”

This reflects a cautiousness about signaling and how other people will take a neutral but potentially charged statement—this is a cautiousness everyone who spends time on the internet or in messaging will pick up and have to exercise. It also might be an awareness of the way in which adding yet another priority to new projects will just slow them down. In other words, it is still not a commentary on the value or definition of beauty in architecture itself.

But that cautiousness, to the people who care deeply about beauty, reads as an endorsement of ugliness. Perhaps you begin to feel like these modernists really do want to foist ugly architecture on us. Perhaps that sharpens your skepticism of the YIMBY movement—and perhaps that makes those YIMBYs more likely to view you as a questionable, reactionary partner.

Furthermore, if your concern about beauty is tied up with a certain conservatism or respect for tradition, perhaps you feel that the “housing people” are concealing a metaphysical attack on beauty and tradition and normalcy under their housing advocacy, which makes you think that maybe new construction does need to be opposed. And now you sound as if you’re taking people’s homes hostages: “Cornices or the people don’t get housing!” And that kind of obstruction more or less has to be opposed by a movement whose goal is to get housing built.

And all of that, with no discernment or interrogation whatsoever over what either side actually believes or where—if at all—its disagreements lie!

I’ll close this all out here. But I’ll be thinking about this a lot, and I hope it’s useful for you in thinking about these and all issues.

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Related Reading:

Urbanist Ecumenism

Me Or Your Own Eyes

Look What You Made Me Think

“I Like My Opinions, Why Would I Want New Ones?”

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