Oadby's Masterplan and the Bible's vision of urban living

Parish magazine article – December 2007

The newly published Oadby Town Centre “Masterplan” is available for public consultation. I’ve obtained a copy of the full 51-page report and it makes for fascinating reading. Pick up a copy from the council or download a copy. You can offer the council your own thoughts before noon on 21 December 2007.

The “preferred options plan” sets out an analysis of the issues facing Oadby’s town centre and offers a vision for a policy framework, against which future proposals for development will be tested and monitored.

While people will have varying opinions on the specifics, I welcome what appears to be a positive commitment to the improvement of the heart of our town (or “village” if you prefer). And it’s made me reflect on the visions for urban living contained in the Jewish-Christian tradition.

It’s become something of a cliché to note that the Bible begins in a garden and concludes in a city. The paradise of Eden was lost, but the renewed creation which completes the Revelation to John is a city, teeming with life.

This is a little at odds with English sentiment over the last two centuries. The romantic charms of simple rural living have persuaded generations that the “unspoilt countryside” is always better option than the delights of town and city. It needs pointing out, of course, that precious little English countryside could be described as “unspoilt”. Two millennia of organised agriculture have shaped and dressed English hills and fields in a beautiful, but certainly man-made, environment. Still, what could be better than escaping the bustle and noise of the tarmac-covered city streets and breathing fresh country air?

While I love the countryside, I rather feel that for many people its chief attraction is the isolation and opportunity to get away from others. We all need space and places to stretch our legs but I wonder if the desire to flee into the quiet green shires goes further. Could it have something to do with our rather ambivalent attitude towards other people? So here’s the question: Is part of the countryside’s attraction as a place to live that it makes it alright to be just a little anti-social? Do people prefer it because it demands less patience and tolerance than the town?

Urban living brings all the nuisance of cramped social space. Part of the stress of living in towns and cities is the constant negotiation that goes with it. People ‘fight’ for parking spaces, ‘do battle’ with the traffic and contend with ‘neighbours from hell’. Working out how to share space is inevitable in the town and city and often difficult.

But if this is the Achilles’ heel of urban life, it also offers wonderful possibilities.

In the Old Testament era, cities were protected with walls, ramparts and watchtowers. They offered far better security than the outlying scattered settlements. And in large cities, guilds of tradespeople worked together in co-operative enterprise. The security meant that cities were the natural places to build palaces for treasures, places for worship and institutions for learning, space for performance, dance, art and music. No wonder that the blessing of the Promised Land was to exchange the broad open spaces of the “unspoilt” wilderness for the congestions of Jericho – a ready-made gift of urban habitation (albeit with some urgent repairs to do to its walls).

When Jeremiah’s people were later exiled into the foreign city of Babylon, they faced the tough question about whether to participate in it or to sabotage it. God’s message to Jeremiah was that the displaced captives should work for the welfare of the city and all its people. It was possible to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land after all.

Jerusalem was finally restored by Nehemiah, who surveyed her broken walls and shattered places. He followed through with divinely-instituted town-planning and renewed the life of the city in bricks, mortar, worship and prayer. The city could not be left desolate – it simply had to be rebuilt with vision, skill and hard work.

When the apostles took the message of the gospel to the Gentiles, the Holy Spirit guided them to market places and to town squares. And the very fabric of civic life prompted questions – in Athens Paul used a sculpture dedicated to an unknown god to point to the one true God he served. In wealthy Ephesus, with its sophisticated public bath houses and grand aqueducts, he disputed with the guild of silversmiths, who manufactured and traded in the streets surrounding the great temple of Artemis. The names of many New Testament books are the names of city-dwellers that Paul corresponded with: Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, Colossians, Galatians.

The final biblical vision is that of a new city, a heavenly Jerusalem, that is even more spectacular in its life and purpose than in its architecture.

Back to earth and specifically to the little bit of it that’s post-coded “LE2”. Oadby’s “Masterplan” offers a vision for the life of the town in a series of affirmations:

• “To establish a distinct and sustainable role for Oadby.

• To encourage the growth of economic and social benefits for local people.

• To create a safe, distinctive and pedestrian friendly environment.

• To achieve an attractive and accessible place to shop, live and work.

• To ensure that Oadby reflects high quality and inspirational design.

• To link the town, physically and economically, to its catchment.”

These are welcome aspirations. If realised, they will significantly improve the town in which we live. But I can’t help wondering if together we suffer from a lack of imagination about urban (or suburban) living and expect our planners to do all the hard work for us.

Certainly, the project of improving Oadby can’t be compared with Wren’s masterful re-working of London or with Haussman’s transformation of Paris. And thankfully the ambitions of the current generation of provincial planners are more modest than those brutal designers of twentieth century modernism, with its concrete and tower block “machines for living”.

But we need to enlarge our vision for shared civic space. It matters enormously that we create an environment that humanises us and introduces us to our neighbours. This vision must be more than retail opportunity and coffee-stops for the middle-classes. The poor, the young, the elderly and the frail must all share the same social spaces as the leisured and affluent. And our ethnically diverse population ought to be properly represented on Oadby’s town centre streets.

So perhaps the greatest and most effective improvement in Oadby will not be the re-worked spaces but the way we use them. Take a look at the plans. Comment, criticise or applaud them. But whatever we end up with, let’s civilise the urban environment with generous and wholehearted urban living. Let’s not dream of escape to countryside homes from where we’ll commute unsustainably. Put down roots in Oadby’s tarmaced fields. We’ll have a better Oadby yet if we move more gently through her streets, smile more often at strangers, pray for her welfare and cherish the land on which we walk.

Simon Harvey