The Desolation of Cities

Not only do crime and neglect act as key features of demographic and cultural decay in cities, but the more apparent victim has also been city aesthetics, apparent in street design refusing to accept the desire to enjoy the walk over a drive, The American stroad(street/road) permeates the landscape and makes walking a danger, not a joy, and the inexorable striving towards the stars ever taller and obscuring, drowns the landscape in a claustrophobic mass of steel and glass. Sidewalks emerge as a new life or death phenomenon as the speed limits rise to accommodate the “need for greed”. Could we ever be so lucky to have a city that looks like Prague?

Walkable streets with open squares, monuments to American greatness the sound of a car a distant memory, you could walk to work and you would live two stories above the best café in town, But alas such is not the American future squalor like the streets of Philadelphia, drugs, and homelessness bring observers to the conclusion America never cared about her cities. You can pick any myriad of reasons for this, the prevalence of cars, Euclidean zoning laws, logistics, no matter how the point is argued the truth remains, we Americans have lost our cities to Moloch, Satan, the Devil whatever you call him and we rush headlong untoward a dystopia of our own will, or possibly the will of our Father. Praise be to God the Father, and His Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and may he bless us with His Grace.