The opening chapters of the Bible are well-known for their depiction of God as the powerful creator of the cosmos, calling everything into being from nothing. Yet as we look at the Lord’s remarkable attention to detail and design found in Genesis 2:8–14, we can start to trace a pattern language that is a kind of ancient wisdom still relevant to the questions our modern urban planners and public parks designers are asking. In God’s creation we find a careful arrangement of trees to create a delight-filled place of holy interaction. There is an intentional assignment of four great waterways to give life to humanity and the flora and fauna. Eden abounds with a diversity of created things designed to provide a good life in a prospering place for all who dwell. 

The creation of places suitable for human habitation finds a human analogue in the numerous “public works” we see recorded in Scripture. Wells—necessary hubs of ancient life—established by Abraham and Jacob lived on for generations to come. Villages and cities were constructed for refuge. Pools and fountains like the Pool of Bethesda were built for human enjoyment and human need. Even when God comes to judge the tower of Babel, we sense a condemnation on misdirected, idolatrous placemaking more than the very good forms of placemaking that God seems to be concerned with throughout the Old Testament. 

Many generations later in the biblical narrative, the prophet Isaiah foretells a time when the holy community will image God through a refracted pattern of placemaking. They will be stewards of the commonwealth in a new and effective way:

Isaiah’s vision is fertile ground for a public theology of city building. The prophet envisions a shared commitment to creating places that are loved and lovable, places of dignity. Such places offer prosperity in the fullest sense of the word—a prosperity of the whole person in community. 

Woven into this expectation of an ethical commitment to acting with charity (doing right) is a realization that such action serves as a display of faithful presence or lives that “glow in the darkness,” to quote Isaiah. But it’s more than that. The faithful presence of co-labourers in Jeremiah 29:5–8 and Isaiah 58 results in substantive alteration of the built environment to “make the community livable again.” 

It’s in this light that we should consider the human obligation to build livable places beyond our carefully curated, private homes. The biblical narrative offers many indications of the value found in the public streets, wells, fountains, and places of gathering that serve as necessary preconditions for life-giving encounters.

Who Are Public Spaces For? 

If you read the Levitical laws closely, you find that one of Israel’s distinct characteristics from the surrounding nations was God’s desire to have families steward the land generationally rather than work the land for a king (or tyrant) as servants. Private property—at least in terms of land owned and cared for by people—appears in the Old Testament to be a countercultural good in the context of ancient empires. 

Despite this, today it is far more necessary in the Western context to provide a full-throated defence of the necessity of public spaces as a key part of what makes a community livable. In our prioritization of private property over against public spaces, we have become accustomed to patterns of development across North America that represent a significant shift away from the way cities and villages were developed for millennia. 

At Strong Towns, we call the embracing of this new pattern the “Suburban Experiment.” It has carved up the spaces that, in past generations, would have belonged to the public and has made them private. Gated communities provide aquatic facilities that are for members only, and community pools are closed due to a lack of funding. Suburban power centres provide massive parking lots but forbid their use for public activities like parades, sports exhibitions, or rallies. In-home coffee bars grow ever more elaborate, but local entrepreneurs face endless hassles to open spaces in zoning-restricted monoculture neighbourhoods. Pelotons and private gyms cater to specific preferences and sequester people into communities of the like-minded and like-bodied. Sound familiar? This pattern replicates itself across a diverse range of American and Canadian cities. 

Even sidewalks are unreliably present in many neighbourhoods, which represents a loss of public passage on foot and is echoed in the absence of well-tended street trees, which serve a public role in providing shade, air filtration, and water storage. Your backyard bonsai is for private benefit; the row of mature ash, elm, and oak trees lining the street is for public benefit, and they are conspicuously absent in too many neighbourhoods. 

The many famous places in Scripture are a good reminder of the enduring quality of public spaces as sites of gathering, holy encounters, message sharing, and embracing the other. Recall the description of the road to Samaria in Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan. While the core focus of the parable rests on the identification of who is to be the object of my care and attention, the road itself plays a part worth exploring. It is not a good road marked by safety, dignity, and security. In that, it shares much in common with the degraded streets of our many communities that are built without regard for the well-being of all who would walk or bike along the sides of these roads. 

The threat of robbers has dissipated, perhaps, but the threat posed by a callous disregard for the lives of the vulnerable on our streets is expressed in the fact that over forty thousand Americans died in collisions with vehicles this past year. Sure, there are valiant efforts to bind the wounds (and pay the hospital bills) of those who are caught up in this calamity. However, we’ve acquiesced to patterns of development that set aside vast swaths of public spaces for auto-dominated usage. Billions of public funds are spent to propel highway-expansion projects forward, yet we balk at the prospect of investing pennies on the dollar to create paths and lanes for people on bicycles and on foot. City streets are rendered unsafe by street designs that induce high speeds. Non-market housing provided by public-service agencies is blocked because of perceptions that it will somehow increase a vehicular traffic burden on some people at the peak time that they, like the priest and the Levite in Jesus’s parable, choose to pass through these areas. 

It is time for us to reclaim a clear-eyed picture of the value of the public realm and the dignity of all who must and can make full use of these spaces that “make the community livable again.” 

We need a process for public investment that returns our focus to the things that are possible right in front of us right now. My colleague Charles Marohn lays it out this way: 

• First, humbly observe where people in your community struggle. 

• Second, identify the next smallest thing that you can do to address that struggle. 

• Third, do that thing as soon as you can. 

• Fourth, repeat the process. 

Our public spaces have been weakened by the persistent deferring of maintenance, ceaseless consultation cycles, and an inattentiveness to the immediate things that can be done to make our communities livable again. 

The focus of much of our attention at Strong Towns is on re-establishing safe and productive streets. These streets contain public rights-of-way where you walk and I cycle and another person rests. These same streets abut private spaces used as housing, employment places, learning spots, and sites of commerce. That’s why, in our parlance, we say that streets serve as platforms for building wealth. They serve as the connective tissue of community. They weave together our places and create the sidewalk ballet that Jane Jacobs so beautifully describes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities: 

Reflecting on Jacobs’s description of the mysterious, organic vitality created in our public spaces makes me appreciate even more the biblical account of a creation that springs forth from nothing into everything in a profusion of life and possibility. This, Scripture would have us see, is a quality that also marks human life and creativity, and it finds its own expression in our lively streets. 

I’m writing these words in San Luis Obispo as part of a trip up the California coast to talk about how the traditional pattern of development was eclipsed by the Suburban Experiment and what this has done to our opportunities to find housing we can afford, carve out a niche business opportunity, and get to know our neighbours and neighbourhoods. We have stilled the vital pulsing of life that should be coursing through the veins of our cities’ common places. 

I stood on the sidewalk to watch as hundreds of people on bicycles and unicycles took to the streets. With broad grins and shouts of “Bike night!” they lay claim to the first Thursday night of each month and return a remarkable dynamism to the street. A joy and freedom of movement. I yearned to track down a bicycle to join them in making the community livable again. 

The energy of the riders filled the streets and transformed the asphalt from a space dominated by solitary commutes into a lively, collective celebration. This vibrant scene served as a powerful reminder that the public realm is not static. It can be reimagined and reclaimed. Watching the joyful procession, I was struck by how much our assumptions about automobile dependency have limited us. I also reflected on how much we stand to gain when we adopt a broad vision of the common good in the public realm. 

Streets, bus stops, and libraries serve as markers of how much we, as a society, value the public realm and the people who use it. The quality of these shared spaces depends on our collective contributions. These contributions may include taxes, labour, and civic pride, but their vitality also relies on our willingness to engage with and support them. 

British writer George Monbiot paints a powerful picture of a just society where private sufficiency lays the groundwork for everyone to enjoy public luxuries. Imagine this—a world where your basic needs are secure, and you can gather in beautiful public spaces, swim in stunning pools, or experience art and music in shared settings. 

So, what happens when we push beyond sufficiency into endless private accumulation? The pursuit of ever-flashier sneakers, extravagant yachts, and more exclusive private spaces becomes not a mark of progress but a treadmill of resource waste. Reflecting on this contrast, Monbiot’s ideal of sufficiency paired with public enrichment feels not only just but profoundly liberating. 

If the creation account in Genesis reminds us of God’s attention to design and detail, the apocalypse—the great unveiling of God’s plan—reminds us that this very same God is actively crafting an everlasting city. In this city, the streets are marked by the luxuries of costly stone and stunning beauty for all to share. And God is not shy about sharing this public space. 

What’s Yours Can’t Be Mine? 

The privatization of previously public spaces takes many forms. It looks like the capture of the commons through unjust actions. Just think of the Highland Clearances in Scotland, the barbed-wire fencing of the American West, or the inequitable access to the well of Paddan Aram in Genesis 25 that Jacob reverses. 

It also looks like the degradation of a lot of our civic places by building practices that move buildings back from the street so that parking lots can occupy the principal place. You can see this in the number of elementary schools that have accounted for the ever-increasing number of drop-offs by vehicle by making “safety improvements” that restrict access points and freedom of movement for children arriving by bicycle or on foot. Much of our public realm and public right-of-way is consumed for two uses that offer little in the way of vibrancy or value: the movement and storage of vehicles. 

Looking at historical photos of my community of Delta, British Columbia, I was struck by the size of the boardwalk that ran through our village. It was wide enough for a full marching band to troop down. Today, it has been carved and whittled down, and it is often necessary to turn a shoulder or step to the side to let someone pass you in the opposite direction. 

Thousands of Strong Towns advocates are engaged in efforts to reclaim public spaces in order to improve public safety and create more prosperous neighbourhoods, but the pushback is sustained and often very fierce. In many communities, even a single street being opened up to allow for walking, strolling, eating, and playing is deemed to be too much of a departure from the previously settled division of public land for the use of automobiles. The premier of Ontario has even suggested that a reallocation of public spaces that fractionally increase travel times for automobiles is incompatible with his vision of a well-governed province. This is a remarkable declaration of an inalienable claim on the public realm for the benefit of a subset of society’s members. 

Does God care how wide a road is? My colleague John Pattison offers a compelling answer: 

What Now? 

Public spaces are meant for everyone, serving as communal areas where people can gather, interact, and engage in civic life. They aren’t for sale in the traditional sense, as their value lies in accessibility and shared use. Elements within these spaces, like vendor stalls or event spaces, might be rented or leased. 

The goal for public spaces is to serve the broadest possible audience in a way that helps alleviate struggles and makes the community livable again. Isaiah’s vision of a people who rebuild with the rubble of the past is an inspiration for every concerned citizen who seeks to open up our streets and press for the widespread upzoning of our housing lands to allow more homes and businesses to emerge in these single-use spaces. 

A growing number of cities have worked with organizations like Better Block to convert distressed public spaces into vibrant temporary gathering sites. Idaho Springs, Colorado, converted all of the parallel streets in their downtown into public plazas, while still providing vehicular access on the perpendicular streets, and the community has realized the newfound value of their previously underused downtown. Residents in Steubenville, Ohio, have transformed the reputation of their city with First Fridays street festivals to reclaim the public spaces for a wide swath of the community. The pattern we see is that cities that have successfully navigated this balance often have vibrant, accessible public spaces that are well-integrated with local businesses and services. On the flip side, poorly managed spaces might be those that are underutilized or overly commercialized, losing their communal value. 

The aspiration for cities is to create spaces that reflect their purpose—places that foster community, support local economies, and enhance quality of life. This requires a commitment to the long-term prosperity of the community, which is realized through persistent refinement and incremental actions that “use the old rubble of past lives to build anew.” 

What will you do to make spaces where you live that are suitable for dining and conversing while you enjoy the fruits of the commonwealth together?