A New Kind of Urbanism

Props to Jonathan for the link.

A current thinker for Radical Orthodoxy, Jamie K.A. Smith wrote an article a few years back discussing the state of the emerging church. The idea in his article for a new urbanism was very refreshing. He talks about how the emerging church should be partnering their concerns with the redemption of these urbanized cities. Where modernity has laid many of neighborhoods and ghettos by the waste-side in the metropolitan areas, postmodernity in the church's context should be for rebirth and renewal in the "least of these" environments. Churches seem more interested in moving to the safe side of suburbia rather than living among their urban neighbors. Not only are some shying away from these areas, the underlying idea of the socio-economic barrier dividing these two (urbanized central and suburbia) can at times be stark. Not to mention its members and the dividing economics seen there. For more info read his article. Smith tells it better than I could.