🌳010 • Imagine a City

3.5 Minute Read (986 words)

Oct 08, 2020

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

-- The Bible, Revelation 22:1-2, ESV

Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

Imagine a city unlike any we have seen yet on the face of this earth. Many cities of wonder already exist, but many remain unimagined. I say imagine a city, but I believe that we must go deeper. We must dream of cities that can be brought into being, of great cities that should be reshaped, of places that are in tune with nature, mixtures of natural landscape and created beauty intersecting to bring forth the voice of its people. Places where everyone can flourish, live in peace, view the beauty of nature, be free from the poisons produced by greed, corruption and power.

Such cities can be dreamed, imagined, and created, but they can never simply exist. They must be worked for, nurtured and cultivated, designed for future generations, created for natural and human flourishing.

As a child, I constantly asked my grandmother when she was visiting our home, or we were visiting hers, to tell me stories about the "City of Gold" as she tucked me into bed. The great city of New Jerusalem, an element of her faith, became one picture of my ideal of a city. Later, I learned of the cities of Alexandria, Babylon, Beirut, Rome and many others that have had periods of wonderous beauty, were loved by its citizens, still longed for. And I learned about other cities only imagined, ideals waiting for people with the courage to build them.

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

― Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Imagine a city in the wild, ringed with wonders, intersected by nature, whether forests, mountains, deserts or waterways. Picture highways for the people, and transport highways that remain separated, so that they can move quickly into key industrial and distribution areas. Imagine crystal clear waterways, without factory poisons and citizen sewage dumped into those precious waters. Places where natural life can flourish, as the human lives also flourish alongside. Imagine factories in the city that don’t simply take from nature’s resources, but cultivate and nurture the resources that nature gives freely—ensuring that there are even more riches left for use by future generations.

As individuals, we can refuse to dream, fail to imagine, scoff at such idealism. After all, our cities, like our governments, our families, our lives, do fall short of our ideals.

However, that never negates the value of those ideals. It simply provides a worthwhile vision to work for, to hope in, and to move toward. Our ideals give us a reason for being. Today’s cities of wonder have dark sides, but through rugged idealism, we can ensure that light fills more spaces, that promise is fulfilled, that the dark places are diminished.

Cities, like nature, must be nurtured, stewarded, so that they can grow to become even more remarkable, more beautiful than many already are. Imagine a city that achieves the ideals of its citizens. Cities that are wild, free, cultured, refined, extraordinary expressions of a symbiotic relationship between nature and the people that give it life and the life that the city gives its people.

“You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”

― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

These invisible cities of our imagination are possible. If we dare to dream, to imagine a better future for ourselves, fellow citizens, and the generations beyond us. Our cities are filled with very real challenges that seem insurmountable to many, but these spaces are also filled with imagination, idealism and the creative activity necessary to create new expressions of urban space filled with wonder, to revive old cities with renewed hope, and to set the course for the plans of future cities built in harmony with nature and humanity.

Zijin Mountain, Xuanwu District, Nanjing, China
Photo by Junyao Yang on Unsplash

“With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

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