How Then Shall We Build?

A personal manifesto.

Be fruitful and multiply. The first divine commandment.

God brings man from the dirt in paradise. He brings woman out of man, still in paradise.

And even before commanding them to take dominion over all living things and subdue the Earth — even before directing them toward the infinite abundance of food at their disposal — there’s one thing that rises above:

Multiply.

God starts the work: “It is not good that man should be alone.”

Eve is given to Adam.

But the two, together, are tasked with continuing that work in the world. And that command is to inform and, in a way, direct the other commands they receive.

While God makes no prescriptions for exactly what their multiplying family and community should look like in terms of architecture or density, we do get one key insight into the mind of the Almighty. Just skip ahead through the next 64 books.

Eden restored (and redefined)

As John reaches the end of his final letter (Revelation), the final book in the Scriptures, he describes the restored Eden. The tree of life has returned, sitting on both sides of the river, yielding twelve crops of fruit each month to feed God’s people.

But this time, in the new Eden, the river flows down the great street of the city.

“City” is a term often used to describe civilizations of between 20,000 and 100,000 people in the scriptures. So perhaps the City of God fits this as well?

Perhaps not.

John describes the city as 12,000 stadia long, 12,000 stadia wide. Approximately 1,400 miles long by 1,400 miles wide.

Sprawling, right?

Yes, but not like a modern suburb. Because oh, by the way, it’s 1,400 miles in height, too.

Packed.

So Heaven’s a slum, then?

Not so fast.

The city walls are described as being made out of jasper, with the city itself made out the purest gold. The 12 foundations of the city are made of 12 different precious metals and gems.

Craftsmanship and beauty of the highest order, stretching for hundreds of miles in every which direction. Democratized access to the greatest places ever made.

This is what waits for us.

The place the human heart longs for most — home — is not less than a garden, but it’s far more. It’s a garden in a city. A garden city: a place as visibly filled with people as it is with trees and plants and landscapes of all kinds.

In the City of God, the entire collection of his people, finally at peace and without blemish, is not only essential. It’s *natural*. God brings us into the greatest that nature has to offer. But He also redefines the very meaning of nature in the process.

So what then shall we build?

As if inspired by the trinity itself, the answer, as I see it, is threefold:

We build cities: not out of our own ambition for scale and greatness, but out of obedience to God that we would multiply in number and informed by the heart of God to always be in the business of making space, recognizing that we are to delight in a community abundant with image bearers, God’s greatest creations.

We build gardens: spaces that allow us to experience, if but for a moment, a mere taste of the tranquility waiting for us in the day to come, but fully recognizing that a core ingredient is still missing: God’s people, free of their sin, shame, and suffering. In the already-but-not-yet age that we live in, creating access to “hints of glory” serves a real, righteous, valuable purpose.

And we build, where possible, garden cities: Places that, while nothing in comparison to what awaits us, us nature and the built environment to form us more deeply into what Martin Luther King called “the beloved community.”

How then shall we build? And who shall build it?

Building for and with God is much like assembling a successful track team: you need sprinters and you need marathon runners.

A city will fail to be rooted in values, virtue, and beauty if it doesn’t have the marathon men running in what Eugene Peterson famously called “a long obedience in the same direction.”

These are the people who create a city’s boundaries, which, as Isaac French describes them, are “not barriers to keep the unwanted out, but thresholds that protect attention, nurture belonging, and make room for love.”

But when a hurricane leaves a coastal town without power and children without homes, that’s where the “garden” piece of the garden city becomes a more flexible short-term priority.

The marathoners will be there to begin the long work of recreating a flourishing space where man and nature are beautifully intertwined. But the sprinters will also need to descend upon a place to make sure people have access to food, water, and shelter, in a way that will likely see the deep craftsmanship of the solutions suffer to do so.

Whether for one-off disasters or ongoing challenges, it’s the tag team of the sprinters and marathoners that leads to flourishing.

Sprinters meet people at a human level in their time of need. They pull a suffering individual out from being part of a statistic a place is seeking to improve over time, and into being treated as a person experiencing real-time hardship. This is the ministry of presence, sitting in suffering with others, and showing them in the short-term that help is available and on the way.

The marathoners begin to prepare the place, thing, job, etc. that will be the sign of the suffering undone: the new house, the new job, the well-made new clothes, the home-cooked meals or dining options, and more.

Marathoners without sprinters create a beautiful world that’s m out of reach of the suffering. Sprinters without marathoners create short-term assistance that seldom leads to long-term flourishing.*

Together, they provide the path to individual and communal thriving.

*The sprinter and marathoner categories are meant to serve as a framework, not as labels are categories for any one individual. Many people, particularly those who are living into the fullness of several talents, will find themselves serving both roles at different times.*

And here we arrive at the great chicken-and-egg dilemma of it all: if sprinters and marathoners are the ones creating communities, but they need one another, where does the community come from for those building?

A calling.

Over time, I’ve found myself standing at the intersection of these efforts: listening to people running sprints and people running marathons, often working toward the same ends without ever meeting. Or when they do, the meetings and connections are siloed into categories like real estate, transportation, disaster relief, etc.

There are already strong institutions doing essential work in these spaces. Communities of practice matter. Shared language matters. Depth within a discipline matters.

What is often missing is not expertise, but coordination — not another field-specific forum, but a place where those fields can encounter one another without needing to collapse into sameness. The work here is not to replace what already exists, but to hold a wider frame long enough for integration to become possible.

This is more than real estate (though it’s not less than that).

This is more than transit (though it’s not less than that).

It’s more than zoning policy (though it’s not less than that).

It’s more, even, than urbanism (though it’s not less than that).

It’s integrated city building. It’s rebuilding communities across North America. And it’s creating a tent — a community — where the people running the sprints and marathons to tackle the broad swaths of challenges our communities face can become a part of one cohesive space.

This is the work I feel called to stand in: creating and holding that space; not to replace what others are building, but to make room for coordination, encounter, and shared attention.

If you recognize yourself somewhere in these pages, then you already know what kind of work this is, and why it matters now more than ever.