Lectures
After Urbanism: How St. Benedict Saved Civilization & May Have to do so Again
Synopsis
In western culture until the modern era, cities were commonly conceived and understood to be the locus of the best life for human beings; and the traditional city can be characterized as a dynamic community that is always and simultaneously an environmental order, an economic order, a moral and spiritual order, and a formal order—-each of which conditions the others in varying degrees of reciprocity. To some degree, this is true also of modern cities and suburbs; but the substance and quality of these reciprocal orders in the modern world differ from those of the traditional city, as does the understanding of the good life for human beings that each represents. The Congress for the New Urbanism is committed to the idea that traditional urban formal order - the walkable mixed-use environment of streets and squares, private and civic buildings - is an objective good that promotes human flourishing. But is traditional urban form sufficient to revive the goods of traditional urbanism in a cultural context of therapeutic and consumer individualism? Or in such a context does New Urbanism simply become a niche market for those wealthy enough to buy a living environment as art? How can a just and generous moral order come to characterize our cities in our strange and estranging modern culture? The history of western monasticism suggests some possibilities.
