Healing Albuquerque Through Creation

As we build and grow Albuquerque, we should help heal the world. This seems like an immodest proposal, but the alternative is not appealing. Do we really mean to wound the world with our creations and our lives? We need to create a way for developers, planners, engineers, architects and landowners to do the right thing.

We worry that our growing city is increases isolation, makes people fat, segregates the rich from the poor, wastes too much gas and water, and simply uses too much farmland and open space for what we get in exchange.

In Judaism there is the goal “tikkun ha olam” - to heal the imperfect world that God created. In Christianity, there is the directive to serve as stewards of all Creation. There is also the belief from the book of Genesis that Man has dominion over the natural world, too. The Bible also calls for us to live in harmony with the rest of God's Creation. Healing, stewardship, domination, harmony. It’s hard to do all of these at the same time, while making a living in today’s America under today’s rules and economics. Rape and pillage seem to be the current economic strategy.

Then there is the hope that every act of creation will be an act of redemption. Pretty high stakes for a homebuilder or a real estate developer and their attorneys, architects and engineers, not to mention the EPC or the CPC.  When did you ever hear them talk about creation and redemption in a public another pro forma hearing.

The problem of applying a faith-based moral directive to real estate development and developers is the incredible range of credible interpretations of “healing the world” here on the ground in Albuquerque - from closing the door to newcomers to buying "open land"(aka farms and fields banked for future development with low ag rate taxes) for new residential or commerial development to tearing down existing failed buildings to building bike trails to erecting Wal-Marts and affordable housing in Valencia County.

It would not be easier to try to secularize the program and call on developers to simply make Albuquerque more enchanting. But if Albuquerque were more enchanting, the world would be a better place to live. What on Earth does Enchanting mean? Charming? Homey? Traditional? Welcoming?

These questions have come into the news with the debates over “what would Jesus drive?” Since the most sophisticated vehicle of the Roman empire was a chariot – the HMMV of its day - it is hard to extrapolate to the 21st Century. Way back then, most everyone walked, especially in the colonies, and no one had car insurance. Jesus demanded that his followers give up their worldly possessions, so it is hard to argue that he really would drive a new truck with an extended cab and the finest Cummins engine, or a van that seated 13 or even a Prius. Perhaps in His modesty, He would risk His life and walk. But in today’s America, can you imagine Him walking everywhere? Most Americans don’t walk, even on their Sabbath.

Now the world is much busier and much more complicated than it was 2000 years ago, sort of. But the stakes really haven’t changed.

Let me return to the idea of enchanting. Here's my definition of an enchanting New Mexican neighborhood:

First: the cars and trucks are subdued. When they enter the neighborhood, they slow waaaay down, They have come home, and the drivers know there are children, chickens and pets about. And when they arrive at their houses, they disappear behind the houses, not into a ginormous automatic two-car garage door. The houses have porches. They meet the "girl scout cookie test" where you would trust your daughter to walk up to the front door where you could see them to ring your doorbell and offer to sell you their cookies.

Second: Imagine the current reality of the snout house side door house where the front door is the two-car garage door, and the entrance for the homeowners is a hidden side door where you the visiting parent cannot see your daughter from the street.

Third: Imagine a neighborhood where your children can walk to their elementary school and bicycle to their middle school. And somewhere inbetween there is a store where they can buy an ice cream bar and bring it home before it melts.

Name one remarkable neighborhood in Albuquerque where you can live this life. The life that we lived in the 1950s.

A version of this essay appeared in The Albuquerque Tribune in December 2004.