Seeking the New Jerusalem in New York City

on the restoration of city life

I have always been charmed by the allure of the Big Apple while strolling down its bustling streets. Despite the din of traffic and tourists, I’m captivated as I look up towards the towering Gothic and Art Deco edifices surrounding me. I’m enthralled by the unique intricacies and details imprinted on each building, revealing a story that emerges from deep within its foundation and construction. At times, I’ll pause to contemplate the beauty before me when gazing at the grandeur of massive structures like St. Patrick's Cathedral, marveling at the treasure before my feeble eyes. 

It’s no surprise that imprudent policing, a poorly managed flux of migrants, and promotion of moral decadence have turned our great metropolises upside down. The knee-jerk reaction of most conservatives is to “retreat to suburbia.” Such a response hinges on an abysmal Lockean view of society, which poses retreating as the best buffer against the chaos of modern American city life. Better to leave them to decay, so the argument goes, while the upwardly mobile can enjoy living isolated and unperturbed lives in the burbs, disengaged from the rest of society. 

Both the current status quo and the strategy of those who seek to escape it is a fool’s errand. The city is a quintessential aspect of our political order, which flourishes most when rooted in some commonly held notion of the Good. Instead of abandoning our cities, we must strive to unleash the glorious potential they hold within. 

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Consider Aristotle, perhaps the greatest philosopher of the West, who famously wrote in The Politics that man “is by nature a political animal,” which is to say that we are born to live in a communal context and to work towards the common good of the polis. What differentiates man from a community of animals is our perception of good and evil promoted through speech. Man exists as an individual within a political community that is united in service of that community’s real and tangible good.

Aristotle’s politics serves as the springboard that Christianity builds upon. Christianity does not abandon the city but makes it anew. St. John writes at the end of Revelation: “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It was prepared like a bride dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Now God’s presence is with people, and he will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them and will be their God.’” (Rev 21: 2-3) The restoration of the world involves the restoration of Jerusalem, the city that God promised as an inheritance to the faithful. God does not abandon the city but instead renews it and dwells in it amongst His people.  

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Of course, urbanism has potential pitfalls (like overcrowding). Thus the reason Christianity has historically managed an esteem for rural agrarian communities alongside its support of urban ones. Agrarian communities, like cities, create a tangible community through the physical aspect of labor and the social friction that it gives way to. Scripture promises farmers that ^“the Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns, and in all that you undertake; and he will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” (Deuteronomy 28:8) 

A.J. Fezza

, citing Camille Paglia, asserts in the pages of this Substack that “the urban child sees the harshness of the street; the rural child witnesses the frightening operations of nature. Both have contact with an eternal reality denied the suburban middle-class child, who is cushioned from risk and fear…” 

There are certainly benefits to suburban life. It allures those disillusioned with urban or rural life with a “best of both world” option, promising both the benefits of greater spaciousness and easy access to businesses (provided you have a car). But the reality is that suburbia, by its nature, is hostile to attempts at building a real community. 

Its draconian demarcation between public and private life, work and leisure, businesses and residences, has an atomizing effect, causing its inhabitants to be detached from any notion of belonging to a larger political community. Further, suburbia is not conducive to establishing meaningful, dynamic institutions. The design of the suburbs inherently pushes us to detach ourselves from and to neglect our obligation to support the political community. Thus, as the intro to cracks in pomo: the zine reminds us, “there’s a reason why Dorothy Day…started her houses of hospitality in cities and farms”–and not in the suburbs. In the effort to restore our cities, we would do well to learn from the model of tangible community and property ownership in agrarian settings.  

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As with many other aspects of our politics, the notion of the political community has fallen off track. 

Proponents of left-liberal policies push for highly bureaucratized cities, culminating in the grotesque and odd apartments where the average citizen lives like a sardine in an over-valued one-bedroom apartment, or in overly-crowded, poorly maintained projects that demean lower-income families. Such policies inhibit residents’ attempts to foster cohesive units, further atomizing them and leaving them with little option but to live lives of decadence and despair. The “hustle and bustle city-goers” see the city as an episode of Seinfeld rather than a political community. Ironically, the most ardent supporters of the policies are working to destroy their own cherished dwellings. 

Right-liberals, on the other hand, default to the opposite mentality of altogether abandoning the cities with the hopes of protection and security. While the retreatists are correct to critique the pitfalls of urbanism, the cowardice of not reclaiming the city is even worse. Ceding the cities to neoliberal elitists who care only about profit and power does not benefit the city, nor the common good. 

When brought to their logical conclusions, both views fail to understand cities from a comprehensive, holistic perspective.

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Let’s return to the Big Apple. Perhaps my favorite city landmark is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though a haven for snooty elitists and ugly modern art, it is also home to art that embodies  eternal ideals of beauty that maintain a profoundly universal, human appeal. One can part through the Red Sea of tourists and enter one of New York’s finest buildings for an enriching experience of art and culture. 

You would think these are experiences that those who call themselves “conservatives” would want to promote. Yet the standard right-liberal party line has abandoned the arts wholesale to the control of left-liberal radicals, who use modern art as either a medium for political propaganda or money laundering (a point which Paglia explores in her C-SPAN lecture on religion and the arts in the US). Stroll into the American art wing and look at the contrast between George Washington Crossing The Delaware and George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware. You do not need a fancy art degree to discern which has real substance and which is trying too hard–you know it when you see it. 

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We are attached to our cities as places of culture, commerce, and unity. American cities should not be like Times Square, a place full of flashing corporatist billboards and bootleg characters asking for photos. The city should reflect the transcendent value of our politics. By abandoning our cities, we abandon our culture.

Case in point: Just look at the state of our nation’s capital. Taking one step outside of Union Station, a marvelous architectural design, visitors are greeted by the whiff of marijuana along with a tent city. The rampant crime and drug usage only worsen the pain, as those in charge of the city only accelerate the decline of our capitol. It’s a perfect contrapasso that as our political order has decayed, so also has our capitol. 

No one wants to live in D.C. Those who come to D.C. come to work in the city, not live in it. The decaying city around them is no worry as long as they can get to work on time. And sure, there are some nice restaurants and monuments. But who really wants to stick around and attempt to fix the community before them? There is no soul in a city like D.C. because few of its inhabitants desire to live in a real community.

This dire state of American cities is why our political order should prioritize restoring them. It’s laughable that the United States can tout itself as the greatest nation, but shirks the duty to restore its cities. Our times call for a renewed political imagination that recognizes the real connection between the individual and the common good, with an eye toward building cities with an infrastructure built for human flourishing. Cities need to encourage and empower the agency of citizens to procure the common good instead of remaining resigned to an apathetic consumerist model. 

It’s time for a new urbanism that implements policies that address crime in measured yet realistic ways, new zoning laws allowing residents to create neighborhoods, connecting those neighborhoods to foster high-trust communities, and enforcing classical architecture that inspires the people instead of degrading them. We need a new “urban renewal” that focuses on planning the city towards common activities such as parks and local businesses and not making the city a hub for impersonal trade and commerce. Instead of separating the city into commerce and residency, the two should be united into a cohesive body that cooperates rather than exploits. 

A city fails if it cannot create an invested community where its citizens cooperate toward the benefit of the tangible good. We should look to the old immigrant communities of New York, which were united by a shared interest and benefitted from a strong community. We can also take our cues from urbanists of yester-year like the great Jane Jacobs, Christopher Lasch, and Ray Oldenburg, or more recent ones like the folks at New Polity, Adrian Crook, Rollie Williams, and the anonymous YouTuber known as Not Just Bikes. These thinkers connect our political order to the strength of the city. If we build strong towns, we’ll have stronger politics. 

Imagine a New York filled with beautiful architecture, a bustling and intimate community, and easy access to the culture before us. Imagine walkable neighborhoods filled with families next to Washington Square Park and small businesses where children play in the street…where each member associates with one another, and where the community is invested in each other’s benefit. Surely, such neighborhoods already exist in pockets around the city. Let us learn from their example.

While expanding such an idyllic vision on a larger scale may sound like a fantasy, the alternative–should we dare not to hope–is not exactly promising. Such a renewed attempt at “urban renewal” need not remain on the pages of this article. Instead, let us move forward in faith to make the New Jerusalem a reality. 

Michael Ippolito is the co-founder and President of The American Postliberal. Michael graduated from the Catholic University of America with a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and minors in History and Theology. He is published in the Daily Signal, The American Spectator, and MRCTV. Twitter (@mikeipps) 

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