L.T. Greer

city

140 posts · page 4 of 10

“Living in an anxious age”

Tim Keller and John Inazu in Christianity Today:

We can also learn from the biblical witness how to engage in the world around us. The book of Jeremiah tells the story of God using the prophet to instruct the Jews in Babylon not to hate or ignore the pagan city, but to become long-term residents, to exercise good will toward it through prayer, and to seek its peace and prosperity. They were to build up the social fabric for their common well-being (“if [Babylon] prospers, you too will prosper” Jer. 29:7). They were to be known as a people who served their neighbors and their city.

Excellent article.

(I wonder, however, if the “protestant” piece is slightly overstated. Isn’t the more fundamental issue provoking the “anxious age” the transition from a monolithic culture to pluralistic one, not from a protestant culture to a non-protestant one?)

“At their best, cities…”

Benjamin Grant in SPUR:

At their best, cities bring us together across economic, social and racial divisions. If the anonymity of the Internet seems to breed trolls, the anonymity of the city mostly yields a decent civility. The public realm is where we safely mix across boundaries. Where we sometimes celebrate as one. Where, at the margins, norms of behavior are contested and enforced. Where protest calls us to account. Where the organs of the state translate white anxiety into violent control. Where symbolic acts of mass murder are performed. And where paroxysms of collective rage at times erupt. This is how much public space matters. It is where everything finds expression. It is where we face ourselves.

h/t Nick Parsons

Radical change across Africa

Great interview from Ken Wytsma in his book Create vs. Copy with relief and development veteran Keith Wright. Some highlights:

Everything is changing in Africa. One out of four people in the world will be African by 2050. Africa will be the world’s top producer of food in twenty or thirty years. Many African countries have completely leapfrogged over landline telephone networks and gone straight to cell towers… Africa is light years ahead of the US in technology facilitating sales through cell phones.

…the most effective way to impact a country is to create infrastructure… Fair trade coffee is a good thing, but it doesn’t have the economic thrust or long-term potential of an electrical grid.

[When I asked Keith,] “What’s the biggest change you think is heading toward Africa?” He quickly replied, “Urbanization.”

These kind of stats and projections demonstrate the strategic importance of church planting in Africa’s rising cities. Orchard Group, the organization I work for, is currently beginning projects with local leaders in the cities of Lagos, Nigeria and Cape Town, South Africa.

“When the Lovable Losers are winning”

Jerry Useem in The Atlantic:

Conventional wisdom has it that the Cubs are either cursed—by a billy goat, a black cat, a fan whose name we shall not speak—or, less cosmically, just plain unlucky. But are they really? A University of Chicago economist, Tobias Moskowitz, asked the same question a few years back and arrived at a startling conclusion: The main source of the Cubs’ curse was the fans themselves.

They are too loyal.

“London as City-State”

City Lab:

The situation [post-Brexit vote] is so tense and surreal that in the aftermath of the referendum result, over 178,000 people have signed a petition demanding that London become an independent city-state.

Talk of city-as-state continues for a number of reasons, including: cities routinely produce an outsized proportion of surrounding regions’ culture, politics, and economy; agriculture’s mechanization and subsidization; and cities are often able to simply get things done in practical ways that elude federal and state governments.

Much of what is said here about London could also be said for many cities around the world in relation to their countries or regions. And in the US, many states have one or two cities that represent most of their “GDP.”

“Comparing neighborhood change in Chicago and L.A.”

Richard Florida in City Lab:

In the end, mapping neighborhood change in both cities underlines the fact that wealth is no longer relegated to the suburbs, nor is poverty a characteristic of the city alone. As a result, the terms “urban” and “suburban” are less helpful now than they were previously. Today’s city is made up of a much more complicated intermixing of neighborhood DNA.

Cities’ outsized proportion of global economy in 2025 and 2050

McKinsey projection for 2025:

Six hundred cities… are projected to generate more than 60 percent of global growth to 2025.

Dan Pelino’s projection for 2050 (emphasis mine):

70 percent of the world’s population will live in just 200 cities by the year 2050. And these cities will then boast 75 percent of the skilled labor in the world and 91 percent of the global economy.

“This Year’s Summer Jam”

Watson Jones in CT:

Although I’m nine years older, [Chance’s] lyrics still resonate. In “Summertime Friends,” he takes me back to walking with “socks on concrete,” eating “jolly ranchers,” and “catching lightening bugs.” Listening, I envision kids running as the ice cream truck slowly makes it way down the street. The girls are outside jumping double-dutch.

Watson is pastor at Restoration Church.

Global cities look more like each other than their regions

As I stepped from the platform into the car, the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of the subway assaulted my senses: a suit-wearing executive barked orders on his iPhone before losing coverage, teens sporting Yankees caps and loosely-laced Nikes slap-knuckled one another in greeting, a beggar entered from an adjacent car jingling his donation cup, most folks read books and screens strategically avoiding eye contact, and white earbuds blasted loud enough for all of us to sing along to Coldplay.

This wasn’t New York City. This was a typical ride on the subway in Mexico City. It was experiences like these on Mexico City’s sprawling transit system that helped me to understand a new global phenomenon: major cities often look and feel a lot more like each other than they do their local regions. In other words, in many ways, Mexico City is more like New York City than its neighboring state of Morelos. And the same could be said for almost any global city.

This is important, because we are increasingly finding ourselves in a world where the predominant mission field is urban. For the first time in history, more than half the world’s population lives in major cities. That means that there are more people in the world’s cities today than ever before — both as a percentage of the population and as a raw number. And the trend is accelerating. This has enormous implications for Christian missions and evangelism. People — the subjects of God’s great rescue — are increasingly located in cities.

This article originally appeared on OrchardGroup.org