For both understanding and flourishing in the built environment, we need to experience it on foot. I realize that in some environments this is impossible, but it is important to resist the temptation to jump in our cars. When we walk, we are confronted with aspects of the built environment that don’t work very well. And, hopefully, we also discover aspects of the built environment that do work well.

It’s rare to find a pastor who is attuned to how “place” informs human experience and community. But a discerning pastor can know more about this than most city planners, if they are attentive to the particular shape of the lives of their congregants and their community. Enter Eric O. Jacobsen (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary), a pastor of 14 years, the last 5 as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Tacoma. “I am not a trained architect or urban planner, but an ordinary pastor who has always lived within walking distance of my church,” he says.

Jacobsen’s 2003 “break-out” book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom (Brazos Press), used the tenets of New Urbanism to help Christians recognize the value of local churches in local neighborhoods. Jacobsen calls his newest book, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic), a “more mature reflection” on the subject.

“I’ve lived almost my whole life in mixed-use neighborhoods where every house looks different and you could walk to the store to get milk or to a coffee shop,” he says. “I live in a small city . . . with my wife, four children, and eight chickens. All of our kids can walk to each of their schools.”

In his interview with researcher Joseph Gorra on behalf of This Is Our City, Jacobsen demonstrates how Christians might think about spiritual formation as it enfolds in particular spaces.

What do you mean by the phrase “built environment” in the subtitle of your book?

The built environment is the physical setting of the public realm—literally the space between the buildings.
We don’t pay much attention to it because the spaces between strip malls, fast-food joints, and big-box stores don’t work very well as public spaces. They are set up for the efficient movement of cars. When we go to older American or European cities, or walk around neighborhoods that were built before WWII, we get some sense of what the built environment can be.

It seems that getting out and about is the first key to understanding the built environment.

Yes, for both understanding and flourishing in the built environment, we need to experience it on foot. I realize that in some environments this is impossible, but it is important to resist the temptation to jump in our cars. When we walk, we are confronted with aspects of the built environment that don’t work very well. And, hopefully, we also discover aspects of the built environment that do work well.

Can you offer an example?

When my family lived in Pasadena, we deliberately chose a church, school, and activities to which we could walk. Because this was Southern California, everyone thought we were crazy, even though we were only walking distances less than a mile. But over time, our friends and neighbors joined us in walking and biking. It was fun to see how this changed not only how we experienced the built environment, but also how we related to one another. Walking or biking together to school provided a way to interact with our neighbors and their kids that wouldn’t have happened if we had all been in separate cars.

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