I recently spoke with Jesuit-run America Magazine for a piece entitled, “Urban planning can facilitate friendship – and the Catholic Church can help.” These conversations are nourishing for me because I can speak to my passion for helping readers walk a bridge between the professional resources of the practice of urban planning and the moral and spiritual wisdom of a Catholic, Jesuit education. Georgetown’s Master of Professional Studies in Urban & Regional Planning, where I serve as a course instructor, intentionally integrates ethical reflection into its coursework and I consistently find that students desire philosophical discussions that build upon the professional skills that they are cultivating at SCS.
The article’s author, Eve Tushnet, makes the case for why civic life in the city needs social friendship and why realizing this kind of connection is difficult in the contemporary city. She presents concepts that go back to the classical philosophy of Aristotle and Cicero: “Friendship was meant to fill the public square; in a sense, friendship creates public life, as one of the primary ways people move beyond domestic concerns into the broader life of the city.” She goes on to diagnose many of the ways that contemporary cities fall short in realizing this vision, including the prioritization of making cities for autonomous individuals who do not need to encounter one another in urban spaces. She points out “anti-homeless” street designs and an emphasis on surveillance that work against social cohesion and organically formed friendships. We can also add to this list the very real threat of violence, which the ongoing situation of war in Ukraine brings into stark relief (see the statement on Ukraine by Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., Georgetown’s Vice President for Mission and Ministry).
One major takeaway of the piece is that society makes tradeoffs in realizing certain public goods, like autonomy, control, safety, order, and comfort, but losing other goods like community and solidarity. The thread back to the Jesuits and their spirituality is the language of “encounter” used by Pope Francis. He describes a culture of encounter in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti:
“Human beings are so made that they cannot live, develop and find fulfillment except ‘in the sincere gift of self to others.’ Nor can they fully know themselves apart from an encounter with other persons: ‘I communicate effectively with myself only insofar as I communicate with others.’ No one can experience the true beauty of life without relating to others, without having real faces to love.”
With the University returning to in-person instruction and my own urban commute to the SCS campus downtown becoming more routine, I find myself engaging with the invitation to “encounter” in the city. Recent walks in the downtown neighborhood suggest that the pandemic continues to significantly influence urban life. Many storefronts remain vacant, the lunch rush of office workers is not as large as it once was, and the unhoused community continues to struggle in a city that can be unforgiving to persons experiencing homelessness. But there are signs of public life returning to some vibrancy, and with that come new opportunities for civic friendship.
One practical way to go about this culture of encounter, rooted in the University’s mission and values, is to sign up for a Hypothermia Outreach Team at Georgetown. Run by the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service, the outreach teams help prevent death from exposure and encourage unsheltered individuals experiencing homelessness to seek safety in available shelters and warming stations.