While it is not a true “tradition” for me, I have always looked forward to the Credit One Charleston Open (America’s largest women-only tennis tournament) as it marks the beginning of spring and has held great memories for me over the years. Now that I’ve left the Lowcountry, the tournament has become an easy place to rally together with friends in a great sporting environment.

As I’ve left Charleston for the Upstate, I’ve noticed that every time I visit, things rapidly change. This is not a piece against change, mind you. Change is inevitable. Cities with unique historical charm, like Charleston, Rome, or Casablanca are always undergoing change and that is okay!

The problem I noticed is that the change is not something that adds to the charm of the city’s culture but detracts from it.

Hurry Up and Be Rude

Charleston has generally been a city built on tourism, especially after the decline of the Naval base in the post-Cold War era. Unfortunately, more and more people are moving to Charleston who visit on vacation, seeing the beautiful buildings, meeting the friendly faces, and enjoying the delicious food which has resulted in near constant gridlock around Charleston’s historic core and a decline in Charlestonians.

I will recognize that I am a barbarian of the North by birth. My accent, as hard as I’ve tried, will betray me as coming from New Jersey, but wherever I have lived, I have worked to adapt to the local culture. In Charleston, things are not done at a fast pace and people are often fashionably late as the pace of life is far slower than a New York minute.

I would not move to the South to expect a great bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel (go to Ruby’s if you’re looking for one), the best dollar slice (not a dollar but Sabatino’s downtown is authentically delicious), or a city that never sleeps 24/7 (even though King Street is lively until the wee hours Thursday through Saturday). I am perfectly happy to partake in our fresh, seasonal food seasons (strawberries, oyster roasts, and softshell crabs to name a few), eschew Wawa for QuickTrip, and trade block parties for bonfires.

Not everyone is willing to leave behind their regional cultures (which is gradually becoming ubiquitous) leading to the proliferation of formerly regional chain restaurants such as (Culvers and Whataburger) and backlash against transplants who complain about the lack of familiar trappings of home.

I could probably forgive the faux pas as both locals and transplants tend to patronize foreign influences such as Cava or Bucees, but the atmosphere of a laid back, coastal town has unfortunately departed.

People will complain about stereotypes (negative or positive), but they do tend to be based on some sort of truth. Whatever you feel about the historical sins of the South, there has always been a genteel sort of manner, even in hate (think bless your heart).

While folks from the real Midwest (not Ohio) tend to have a similar enough culture in terms of being friendly and helpful, Northerners and those from the West Coast tend to stick out like a sore thumb. There seems to be a sickness of sorts, as something as simple as a nod or thank you, sir, or any sort of acknowledgment of our fellow humans is no longer something locals take for granted.

So, When are You Allowed to Complain?

As Charleston loses its identity, it has very little to truly show for it. Yes, the port is ever expanding, CHS airport is busy, hotels are popping up like weeds, and CofC is growing in prestige, but the average denizen (especially the one with local ties) has received an ever-expanding rush hour, higher rent costs, and a profound sense of loss that people assure them is unimportant.

To make matters worse, agents of change elected to make things better (think Mayor Cogswell in Charleston) have continued to ignore the needs of the citizen in favor of the needs of the tourist. The beautiful urban density that is a mix of retail and rowhomes that has defined Charleston to the world is eschewed in favor of luxury hotels and low-density projects to appease those who worry about their property values.

Numerous projects that have been proposed have been radically watered down for either cost or complaints about ambition, resulting in a series of future half measures that will not help bring Charleston any sort of relief via typical YIMBY measures. These include but are not limited to: redeveloping the old Naval Base to provide a “downtown” for North Charleston, redeveloping the Union Pier with a dense, multi-use development with a focus on housing, the recently announced surface parking lot conversion into affordable housing near MUSC, and the Lowcountry Rapid Transit (LRT) which is a Bus Rapid Transit project aiming to connect North Charleston to downtown.

Due to the downward pressure of natives who feel boxed out of the world they once knew, their only response to seeing projects that have a positive end goal (increasing supply for transit/housing) is to combat them because as Treebeard the ent once said,

This is the taboo part of my thinking that our modern, liberal world (in a classical sense not left/right paradigm) does not allow us to ask. “When are we allowed to preserve cultures/ways of doing things?”

Does a culture have to be X number of years old to be considered worthy of preserving? Does it have to have a certain ethnos or be made up of people that consensus agrees are marginalized?

Charleston’s core culture is hardly ethnic centric. The iconic churches of Charleston betray the multi-ethnic makeup of German, French, English, and African Americans who all made important contributions to the city’s makeup and charm. Charleston culture is something that realistically anyone can adapt to and continue, but the genteel nature of the native meant that the rules were hardly enforced and what was once special is being lost.

Is this a bad thing? I guess that is also a question worth asking. I will always enjoy my time in the Holy City for its still-thriving downtown, beautiful coastline, amazing food, and lifelong friendships that I’ve forged, but it’s like seeing loved ones suffer from a disease and being unable to help them no matter how much you would like to.

Editorial Note: The name of this publication has changed!

There is a fun irony about our perception of being a “free thinker.” Plenty of thinkpieces have been written on who protects and cherishes free speech, but few people actually delineate what they think it means to think for yourself.

Because in all honesty, does anyone really think for themselves? This past weekend, I took Máder up to Asheville, NC, for the afternoon/evening to do some bebopping downtown and see the legendary Billy Strings play to his 19th consecutive sold-out crowd in the city.

Mom, a veteran of NYC in the 80s and Kingston, Jamaica, prior to that, has little fear when it comes to cities, but many on the right are downright terrified of the city of Asheville. The Facebook right-wing groupthink would have you view the city as a bombed-out hellhole filled with the roaming dead requiring a bulletproof Cybertruck, tactical gear, and a shotgun to navigate safely.

While we did see a homeless person after the concert sleeping inside a building, we generally had a very positive experience that would not reinforce that stereotype for us.

Asheville certainly has its issues, do not get me wrong, but often the arguments made by people who only watch/read the news and never actually go somewhere ring hollow compared to actual experience.

That said, after the concert, my phone/social media decided that I needed to join every Billy Strings fan group known to man. While I declined to, I found that the reaction to his rocketing stardom is quite controversial.

At the concert, you could see several different types of fans boiled into one, happy soup. The out-of-town groupie that travelled without a ticket, hoping to snag a last-minute sale, the far too few locals who grew up fans of bluegrass/NC style Appalachian music, the Grateful Dead (deadhead) fans who see Billy as a reincarnation of either Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir, and the wealthier fans who just appreciate the talent.

This clash of cultures can result in online groups hating on each other, hurling memes and complaints at one another with vicious ferocity. Despite the online chatter, the group of misfits in person were generally quite friendly to us and each other. The fans were everywhere in Asheville’s walkable downtown, patronizing restaurants and commercial markets, busking with guitars and fiddles, and waiting all day outside the venue hoping to be at the front row of the general admission on the venue’s floor.

You can argue that the internet is just not real life, but real-life people talk on the internet. I would argue that it is easier to peer pressure people online into ideas when they are lacking in firsthand information to refute, and first impressions are quite sticky.

Why does any of this matter? Well, I think it is important when we discuss narratives like “Are cities safe?” or “Can hippies add to the productive economy?” that we do our best to do so in a sober way (unlike the people at said concert - ha!).

Good faith discussions around important topics are increasingly rare outside of long-form podcasts, and I think it is important that we do our best to not poison the well as best as we can!

Quick Sidenote About Asheville

Sometimes referred to as the “capital of Appalachia,” Asheville has a rich architectural history with some truly stunning buildings. While that history has largely been preserved, unfortunately, the city seems to be caught in a tourist trap.

Since the city has long been a haven of tourism, it can rely on the steady income to support a diverse array of restaurants, nightclubs, and activities/attractions like whitewater rafting on the French Broad River or the Biltmore.

Unfortunately, this means that there is a semi-permanent working underclass that has an economy designed against upward mobility and purely on extraction. This is something I covered in my piece on pilgrim vs tourist.

Asheville and the area have industry, and there is a lot of potential to see a downtown that is truly thriving with both out-of-towners and locals who can create new iconic buildings and songs instead of barely holding on to what is left of a thriving world.

There is a project to restore passenger rail service with a new station in the River Arts District, which would assuredly bring plenty of tourists (especially during fall, as the train route runs through scenic forests), but would provide some much-needed connectivity that could be the catalyst for growth.

The Conservative critiques against Asheville (filled with transplant yuppies, fiscally irresponsible, and too soft on crime) are all rooted in reality, but for the city to truly change it will have to shed some of its “hippie weird” charm to become something besides a mausoleum to gawk at.

Brookline has officially become my favorite neighborhood in America. Beautiful mixed-density streets, calm traffic, great sidewalks and bike lanes, convenient access to the greatest transit line in Boston (green line), and a great amount of retail make for a very vibrant, unique neighborhood.

Flying up from the sunny southeast to Boston during MLK weekend seems like an odd choice, but I was here to see a classic Big East basketball rivalry game between the fighting Boston College Eagles and the Orangemen of Syracuse. The game was fantastic (Eags won!), but it was hardly the highlight for my inner appreciation of the beauty of Boston’s fairly unique urban setup.

The Boys of Brookline

What is better than reuniting with the boys while they are fighting for their lives in the gauntlet that is ACC Men’s basketball? Obviously, an 8 am challah French toast at Zaftig’s Delicatessen. Not a far walk from where I was staying, this warm hug of eggy bread and crispy bacon powered me through the mid 30s chill of a New England winter.

While I mostly spent my time in Brookline either sleeping or walking, I did plenty of observing during the latter. Coming from a small town in the Southeast, lacking in sidewalks and interesting places to walk to, it felt almost alien to see moms pushing strollers, friends drinking (iced!!!!) coffee, and bikers traversing protected bike lanes.

The best part of Brookline wasn’t the Trader Joe’s bathroom or the Belgian waffle with ice cream in the middle, but the semi-legendary GM of Otto’s pizza - Mike. Sitting at the bar, eating a very fresh tiramisu talking about Carolina Hurricane hockey and New Years’s shenanigans like I was talking with a lifelong friend.

If you haven’t read my “becoming a local” piece, this would be a great time to understand why this hour-long experience resonated with me.

Learning to Be a Harvard Man

After visiting one of America’s oldest antiquarian bookshops, I decided that a trip on the Red Line’s fancy new traincars would be worth seeing Cambridge, MA.

And what a train ride that was! Floating across the Charles River would probably be a lot more magical in the warmer months, but I certainly enjoyed it. As a College of Charleston graduate, I take great pride in our frequent designation as America’s most beautiful campus. That said, Harvard certainly seems like a great contender for the title.

A series of grand buildings make up the beautiful Harvard Yard, which was teeming with tourists, guided tours, and a few college students going about their Saturday. While I was unable to see the Harvard Museum of the Near East due to it being a Saturday, I was able to encounter the Germanic Museum (which was beautifully bizarre), the Peabody Museum of Archeology (small but really intriguing), and the Harvard Museum of Natural History (worth the price of admission).

In my training to become a Harvard Man, I learned that they played a large part in archaeological efforts in the 19th and 20th centuries. Specifically within the Americas. The piece above that says, “El Muerto al cajon y el vivo al fieston” really stuck with me. There is an idea I have encountered in some Christian traditions that we die twice: once physically and a second time when we are forgotten.

I talked a bit about this in my reflections on the supra, but I am seeing a small revival in the trend of familial remembrance and intentionally preserving that which we might otherwise lose.

While my time in Cambridge was brief, I hope to revisit on a Friday in prettier weather to get the full experience!

Eating My Way Through the North End

My dad often says, “Christianity is all about food. Jesus was always cooking or distributing food!” And there is a great reason why food is so important to humanity (especially Italians).

The North End is Boston’s “Little Italy,” where you can still hear old and young speaking fluent Italian (not just Italian-American slang) and get the best cannoli this side of the Atlantic. Reducing a neighborhood to its culinary contributions may seem unfair, but nothing unites like a meal shared between friends.

After college, I found it harder to make time to spend with my friends as we developed “lives” due to our work schedules, where we lived, and no longer being within walking distance of each other or our favorite coffee shops. The only times we could really make time to see each other was over lunch/dinner sometimes spread over a period of months rather than days or weeks.

Taking the time to enjoy both amazingly fresh food and the company of friends, I only share words with over a screen, reminded me how much I have to be thankful for even when life seems dull or uninspiring.

In a city that is often paralyzed between two worlds (the traditional and the modern), I found the moments of clarity in the ethnic enclaves that make Boston one of my favorite cities to visit on the East Coast.

…But it is still Let’s GO YANKEES.

Nostalgia is a tough topic to address in an average-length Substack article. Webster’s tells us that nostalgia means, “a sad pleasure experienced in recalling what no longer exists: a wistful or sentimental yearning for a return to or the return of some real or romanticized past period or some irrecoverable past condition or setting.”

There are plenty of ways we can discuss the positives and negatives of nostalgia, but today I want to talk about it in the framing of the Biblical account of Lot’s wife.

Looking Back with Lot’s Wife

I know this is a big departure from my usual content, but bear with me as we quickly talk about Lot’s wife from the usual angle you may or may not be familiar with. Lot was considered a righteous man, and G-d sent two angels to rescue Lot’s family from Sodom and Gomorrah’s pending destruction.

While fleeing the city, the angels command the party to “not look back,” and Lot’s wife (unnamed unless you consider the Jewish midrash’s naming of Ado/Edith) fails to obey this command and is turned into a pillar of salt.

Harsh penalty for simply turning around from the apocalypse! How does this apply to the design of cities and countries? Why would her nostalgia for the city she grew up in be both a sin and cause for immediate doom?

Don’t Look Down & Let Go of the Past

Two New Testament narratives complete what I regard as the Christian view of nostalgia. First, the story of Peter as a disciple and second, the story of the rich young ruler work in concert with the story of Lot’s wife (with nicer temporal outcomes).

In the story of Peter, he sees the Lord Jesus Christ walking on the water during a storm. Christ calls to him, and he initially walks out onto the water in blind faith. Eventually, his humanity reminds him that he is doing a supernatural deed, and his faith wavers, causing him to stop and nearly drown.

In the other story, we hear of a “rich young ruler” who inquires about what he must do to attain eternal life. Christ implores him to sell everything he has for a greater reward in Heaven and to follow him. The rich young ruler stops to reflect on his worldly possessions and leaves without attaining eternal life.

What do these three stories have in common?

• An invitation on faith to follow what is good

• Human thinking causes the momentum to stop

• A nostalgia for the good of the past and a refusal of an eternal good

The key I use to connect the three is the second bullet point. When our human thinking comes into play, when we are presented with the opportunity for something good, we tend to self-sabotage based on what we remember the past being.

“This neighborhood has never had anything but single-family homes!”

“This part of town has always been affordable with access to jobs!”

“I’ve never had a problem with making friends or finding things to do!”

The past Lot’s wife remembered, the natural laws Peter’s faith eclipsed, and the route to eternal life the rich young ruler had memorized were no longer applicable. Nostalgia transports us via memories to a specific moment in time that is pleasant, but in many ways a lie that ignores the changing reality of the present.

The nostalgia of Lot’s wife would have jeopardized the entire family by pleading with them to turn back and try to claim what was no more, much like the Israelites who pined for the “good old days” of Egypt. Those days were no more! There was no going back!

How Nostalgia Cripples Dynamism

Dynamism refers to how cities grow, expand, and develop over time. Having a healthy combination of talented people, capital, amenities, infrastructure, housing, and good ideas (that become businesses, amenities, or other value-creating assets) makes cities far more dynamic than rural areas, villages, or small towns.

Institutions like colleges, world-class hospitals, and large companies can add value that has drawn people from the countryside for hundreds of years. Yet, we see the dynamism of historic megaregions such as the Bay Area and the Northeast corridor breaking in favor of emerging megaregions such as the I-85 corridor and the Texas Triangle because nostalgia is destroying the dynamism of those areas.

San Francisco, NYC, and Boston are faced with insane rents and home prices in both their core and bedroom communities, as lower-density neighborhoods seek to preserve their property values by disallowing or stymying new construction.

Silicon Valley tech titans have openly considered relocating more infrastructure to “Sun Belt” (an awful term, but we will use it this one time) cities like Austin, Miami, and Phoenix to escape high barriers to innovation and cost-of-living pressures that restrict the available in-person talent pool.

So, why do cities that were once hubs of dynamism repeat the “sin of Lot’s wife?” Because nostalgia is far easier and comforting than accepting the maelstrom of change. The relative safety of the boat was far more normal for Simon Peter than the terror of the storm. The stability provided by wealth in the ancient world was far more appealing than giving a fortune away to the poor to follow a renegade rabbi-street preacher.

The truth is that nothing stays the same. Coastal cities like Boston and Charleston have dramatically changed since the 1700s out of necessity to increase living space, increase opportunity for trade (the deepening of Charleston harbor to 52 feet), and increase their ability to keep talented people in the area by offering new and greater non-trade opportunities.

Yes, it is great to preserve our beautiful, historical spaces, but from the time of the founding fathers to the times of the great inventors and architects of the 20th century, we have historically embraced change in our landscape.

Unfortunately, the last great change of our landscape was the destruction of many of our great neighborhoods and urban fabric with the “urban renewal” of the 1960s. Change brought highways and freeways and cars to downtowns at the cost of vibrant, walkable neighborhoods, historic buildings that were replaced by monotone memorials of what once was.

A nostalgia for the America of the 1930s, 1980s, or 2010s is misplaced as that America is no longer with us. Looking to the past is not always with nostalgia in mind, and can be useful. In a Jewish/Christian context we can look to the story of King Josiah who enacted major reforms on the rediscovery of, “the book of the Law of the Lord.”

Looking to the past in this case was not an act of “what was done back then,” but looking at the past to find solutions for the problems of the present. If we plan on building our way into a more affordable, dynamic country that will survive another 250 years, we have to abandon the nostalgia of the past for the faith of a brighter tomorrow.

America has had a fraught relationship with the things that have made her great. We take for granted that the rural countryside has always been a source of patriotism, rebellion, and American pride, while the cities were dangerous, anti-American, hell holes.

Even just a high-level look at the American Revolution would tell you that it was the great American cities, such as Savannah and Charleston in the South, that were “hotbeds” of anti-British sentiment. While the backcountry was mostly sympathetic to the loyalist cause. While there were great patriots from rural America (a personal favorite, the Overmountain men), the British spent most of their time trying to rule the unruly cities along the coast, filled with contentious merchants and ideological pamphleteers.

During the Civil War and beyond, the same backcountry here in the Upstate of South Carolina was host to draft dodgers, Union soldiers, and moonshiners who inhabited what became known as the “dark corner,” as their relative distance from civilization insulated them from feeling any sort of connection to the American nation state.

The sentiment of what modern-day conservatism associates with “historical American conservative values” is generally not one of the city but of the countryside and the countryside from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Jim Crow era has long been against any sort of progress imposed on them by politicians in big cities whether they are Republican, Democrats, Whigs, or anything in between.

So, why has this sentiment that is often out of step with mainstream American political identity remained and grown into the vaguely Libertarian Conservative movement today? How have American conservatives largely failed to create cities worth living in despite complaining about how liberals run them? And how do these ideas play out in the rapidly shrinking countryside? Let’s attempt to unpack that.

Fear

Many of those who settled in America's countryside were not concerned with big, intellectual ideas such as “Manifest Destiny,” the “Monroe Doctrine,” or anything you may remember from high school. They were concerned with having enough food not to starve, fighting off hostile forces like the French or the various Indian tribes, and raising a family in non-idyllic conditions.

Such a lifestyle bred very hardy people that would come to define the American West that we now view with nostalgia, but for all of our modern attempts to cosplay as cowboys, we have minimal context into their lives.

The first issue I have with modern American Conservatism is a fear-based approach to governance. Whether it’s a Facebook post about kids riding skateboards or community complaints at a city council meeting over a bike path “bringing in homeless people,” there is a never-ending well of ways that the tiniest bit of progress is going to backfire.

Instead of leading with ideas and a positive vision built on good-faith arguments, conservative approaches have included regressive measures that stifle innovation and development which largely favor those with deep pockets who can afford to wait to build yet another modernist 5 over 1 as opposed to the local developer who would prefer to build something unique if the system wasn’t designed against him.

This fear permeates into all aspects of local governance. You can’t have a nice downtown because downtowns cause crime, you can’t have a rail trail because that causes crime and homelessness, you can’t have public transit because only criminals and the poor use it, and the list goes on and on.

You can trace this fear to legitimate concerns, but not legitimate solutions. The response to the fear is not to be strong or try and improve the situtation of the destitute, but to increasingly avoid even the smallest chance of anything negative happening.

As history is our guide, avoidance of conflict or negative situations is impossible! Despite all of our technological and societal gains, we have created a society of whimpering where our American ancestors rose up to the challenge with extremely inferior resources.

The same settlers and frontiersmen that we praise faced off against deadly predators, native Americans in competition for food and land, and harsh winters or infertile ground without refrigeration, repeating rifles, and government assistance.

Nostalgia

Our nostalgia for the past rarely yields positive outcomes in legislation. Too often, older generations yearn for the positives of their youth, divorced from the negative context.

Without wading into any specific policies attached to the concept of Make America Great Again (MAGA), the biggest problem is finding a specific time when everything was great! The post-WW2 baby boom was a time of prosperity and rebirth for some. However, men were still fighting in foreign wars (Korean Conflict), infant mortality was 31 per 1,000 live births (compared to 5 per 1,000 today), and there were significantly more people below the poverty line. Life expectancy was 10 years lower than it is today!!!

Too often, people predicate public policy on fabled notions like “a man could support a wife, kids, and a mistress on one income,” which is patently absurd. Maybe the upper 10-15% could, but the average person was significantly worse off in these supposed “glory times” that we gloss over because we choose to remember the good over the bad.

There are a million “inconvenient truths” to dispel notions around modern home ownership, birth rates, and economic mobility that I’ll save for future pieces, but the thru line is that we look to the past without understanding it which causes pain in the present and turmoil in the future.

Apathy

One of my main gripes with modern Conservative thought (minus Trump because Trump is Trump) is a seeming contendedness with the need to change things. They have been content to allow their opposition to run cities and states, no matter how much they complain, because they never run or incubate competent leaders to take their place.

They could not capitalize on angst in California state or NYC mayoral politics because they have spent zero time creating a stable of serious candidates with serious ideas (as much as I and the rest of the internet love Curtis Sliwa).

The largest city run by a Republican (Dallas) is only because a sitting Democrat switched teams. Here in my home state of South Carolina, Nancy Mace is viewed as a frontrunner for governor, which would be a joke if the state were remotely competitive.

Politicians with a vision and a goal to promote dynamic outcomes like Nikki Haley (former governor of South Carolina) and Spencer Cox (current governor of Utah) are few and are generally maligned by the broader conservative movement because they don’t double down on loser issues at the ballot box.

There doesn’t seem to be an appetite to truly make America great again because that would require creating a dynamic economy that does things, and doing things might require politicians to roll up their sleeves.

Future of Conservative Urbanism

I apologize if this read like an angry rant from a bitter ex, but like Frank Costanza said, “I have a lot of issues with you people!” A special shoutout to Bobby Fijan for inspiring this article that I meant to write weeks ago, but haven’t had that moment of spark to write.

So with all that negativity out of the way, what is my positive vision for a center-right view of better cities? The biggest hurdle that will remain is a broken sense of trust in our culture. Whether it is drama queen college football coaches that break your heart before the playoffs or fellow citizens who refuse to obey the rules of law, there is a distinct lack of trust in our society.

Once that trust gets broken, it becomes incredibly hard to repair, and this lack of trust has fueled Conservative pessimism towards both the city and the walkable environment. Tools like the SUV, single-family suburban home, and private school provide a barrier between those who choose to live in a “high-trust” society and those who seemingly have no desire to.

The key factor that has changed minds in some circles is a growing perception around housing being unaffordable due to constrained supply, the increasing encroachment of the suburban slop on rural America, and roads that do not pay for themselves.

For all of the negatives, there have been some great success stories in red-state America. Conservatives’ traditional hatred of regulation has allowed cities like Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, and Charlotte to build a ton of housing supply that can make projects like the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor and the Texas High Speed Corridor viable in the future (if Conservatives had any vision to build infrastructure that was not highways).

Look for the right to champion: projects centered around civic beauty, like neo classical government buildings and homes built in a traditionally American aesthetic, energy independence projects around geothermal and nuclear, and improvements to the suburbs around adaptive re-use.

The past two weekends, I’ve been checking off stadiums from my sports bucket list, and I have realized that sporting events might be the most obvious ways we can learn to move from being tourists to being pilgrims.

What Does Sport Have to Do With Anything?

I know this is a bit of a departure from my usual writing, but sports are as integral to how we live in cities as anything else. College towns (especially in the south) are built around sports. Retail stores are heavily indexed in team merch, bars and restaurants are themed around mascots and in-jokes, and the town’s vibrancy ebbs and flows with gameday.

But when your town is built around something that is deeply important, it reminds us that we are a deeply spiritual people. In sports, fans rarely view themselves as tourists when checking off stadiums and rivalry games off their bucket list. Stadiums like Chapel Hill’s Dean Smith Center or Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium require fans from far away to come dressed in their special colors, participate in local rituals and customs, and buy new good luck charms to take home with them.

Sports fandom serves as an excellent facsimile of spiritual searching because both require worship, devotion, and sacrifice while providing a sense of “meaning” in a world that can otherwise feel meaningless. They provide community and connection by binding people together who would otherwise be complete strangers.

While the average casual fan might not see themselves as a pilgrim, the average fan more than likely does, and I think that is actually a very positive thing.

Why Being a Tourist is No Bene

While it is not a moral failing to be a tourist (we all have been at one point or another), the tourism industry has begun to rot and decay as tourists overstay their welcome in places such as Spain, Italy, and Mexico.

Tourists are often stereotyped as being loud, obnoxious, oblivious of local customs, and sticking out as a sore thumb. A far cry from our lifelong sports fan who has traveled far and wide to mingle with thousands of his fellow fans.

The sports fan - much like the pilgrim - is a traveler who travels with the destination in mind because he knows something about it that means something to him. He’s not picking out a dot on a map because he saw a reel about the best hidden waterfalls or hole-in-the-wall restaurants. He fits in because he knows what to wear, what not to wear, what things to say, and what faux pas to avoid because he has respect for the “sacred ground” he traverses.

The modern-day tourist - unfortunately - is too obsessed with gawking at the things he is told to find interesting and hardly has any proper grasp on what is actually taking place. Unfortunately, these behaviors mold the locals' behavior.

To support these tourists, the locals are forced to become caricatures of themselves. A cosplay or drag show for the benefit of the out-of-towners. Much like when Kramer in Seinfeld put on a “mugging” for the benefit of German tourists on a scenic bus so they could tell their friends, “they saw a real NYC mugging.”

The loop of tourists and their dollars often feeds these negative stereotypes and forces them to exist; otherwise, “the city isn’t what it used to be.” This is why residents of cities such as Barcelona and Lisbon have had enough and have taken out their frustration on the tourists, despite their economies being reliant on their’ dollars (to a degree).

How do we fix the problem?

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that most fans - even bitter rivals - love being hospitable. I’ve been to both sides of the Yankees vs Red Sox rivalry, and I never felt threatened by wearing my New York Yankees clothing. Sure, I took a lot of jokes at my expense, but the people of Boston are much friendlier than their reputation precedes them.

On the flipside, wearing a sports jersey in friendly or neutral territory is one of the fastest ways for you to make friends in 2025. I was at a blues concert in Asheville a few months ago, wearing my Lamar Jackson Baltimore Ravens jersey, and I made a friend at the show because the Ravens were playing that night. We talked for like an hour before the show and exchanged numbers.

There is something extremely powerful about sports that you can probably explore in a different piece. Still, let's take away the positives of community and pilgrimage when we think about traveling on holiday.

The special thing about me putting on a Ravens jersey is not the material, the authenticity of the kit, or even the name on the back, but the fact that it tells a little bit about me. “Are you from B-more? What makes you a Ravens fan?”

It gives me an instant connection that I can share with someone I wouldn’t know from Adam. The same could be said to a pilgrim walking the Camino de Santiago or a pilgrim journeying to Mecca on hajj. Undertaking a pilgrimage gives pilgrims something in common with locals or fellow pilgrims, creating bonds rather than barriers.

Planning a trip is one of my favorite parts, but a trip does not have to be just a vacation - regardless of the destination. Let’s put my ideas in a practical sense.

Say you want to plan a vacation from the mountains to the sea. Take a popular beach town like Fernandina Beach, Florida, for example. How do you transform a trip like that?

Well, the tourist goes with the intention of extraction. Every moment is captive for their Instagram feed or the latest gossip in the family group text. “You won’t believe what we did at the beach, OMG!”

This behavior is a large part of the difference between the tourist and the pilgrim. There is nothing wrong with having fun and creating lifelong memories, but they should not be used to make your life seem more interesting than it is. Chasing these thrills is as dangerous as it gets for your mental and spiritual health.

Do some research before you go. Find out that Amelia Island/Fernandina Beach has a wonderfully rich history, and expose your kids to some of it to learn what role it played in the country they live in. As you explore, use your eyes to see and absorb, not gawk. Treat people with respect and be curious to learn their stories, and they will do the same for you 9 times out of 10.

These are the actions of the pilgrim, and if we had more pilgrims in the world, the world would be a far better place. Unfortunately, this pilgrim has been 0-3 in his sports pilgrimages this year, and might need to rethink his strategy.

Earlier this month, I attended an event called Southeastuary, where I learned lessons on passing down traditions, ruminated on the dangers of AI to human interaction and progress, and connected face-to-face with many people I’ve interacted with previously online.

Last weekend, I attended the Art of the Tamada, an event hosted by the First Things Foundation at Keipi, a nonprofit restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina. The event aimed to impress on the attendees the importance of eating with strangers, learning their stories, and organizing dinners like this on their own.

What is a Supra and How Can it Change the World

At the Art of the Tamada, they had three tables setup to host a proper Georgian supra. The Supra is a Georgian tradition where a tamada (toastmaster) leads a table in a series of toasts where diners are invited to share from their personal lives. The supra is intended to be a fully participational event where everyone gets to learn about everyone and at the Art of the Tamada that reality was certainly borne out.

Each table (there were three total) had around 18 guests, with one tamada each who performed a series of toasts that were performed as an act of poetry and an invitation to participation.

Our table was particularly lively with a great mix of characters who, over the course of the evening, truly went from strangers to something approximating family. I could do a long article on how great the food was, the history of the tradition, and talk about how Heers feels very deeply on the fact that the supra can help to bridge the deepening divide in our increasingly polarized world.

But that story isn’t truly mine to tell or something that I specialize in. Instead, I want to focus on something that came to mind in between sips of amber wine and yelling, “GAGIMARJOS” as loud as I could because our tables were at war to be the best.

How Food & Restaurants Create Place

(The above video was the morning of the event. I took Tony to a semi-legendary Greenville establishment, Swamp Rabbit Grocery, and we found a piano that said play me)

There is a certain issue we have with how we eat food, and the success of restaurants like Keipi (which hosts a weekly community supra on Friday nights) only seems to prove that. “Experiential dining” seems to be popular in many cities, where you can go out to eat in a group setting, usually with non-American food.

There are plenty of diverging opinions on how we eat (eating out vs cooking at home), what we eat (healthy food vs fast food), and how much we consume (overeating vs eating disorders), but much of our “displacement” can be traced to the food truckification of the country.

For the record, I am not a food truck hater or a brick-and-mortar purist. Food carts can play an important role in “creating place,” and food trucks have a similar role, but the problem with food trucks is the role they've played in changing how we view the food we eat.

Food trucks require food to either be made quickly onsite or slowly ahead of time and merely reheated. Food trucks are great for prospective restaurateurs because they can be brought to people (as opposed to people having to come to them) and can take advantage of car-centric urban design at places like office parks and festivals.

For the busy person on the go, the food truck (along with the drive-thru) allows ultimate convenience and the avoidance of most conversation. The food truck model offers a limited menu, simple food that can be eaten quickly, and ideally something that provides a taste of a different culture (to add some spice to the otherwise blandness of the experience).

With the rise of the food truck, restaurants were forced to adapt. One of the biggest adaptations has been the rise of the “slop bowl counter.” Restaurants like Chipotle, Cava, and Sweetgreen offer a curated experience of a specific ethnic cuisine, but served in bowl fashion, which is quickly being called a “slop bowl.”

The success of these companies has created more and more copycats, which has only further destroyed the fabric of our historic restaurant culture. The restaurant has generally been an extension of hospitality and the culmination of a family’s vision.

The restaurant that serves slop, whether mobile or stationary, promotes a culture increasingly disconnected from the world we live in. Dishes - whether from nobility or peasantry - pass down a tradition that is embedded in a set of ingredients and the order in which they are fused.

Food was created to be something special. Something shared. There is great artistry even in the simplest street foods, whether tacos, gyros, or hot dogs, because they reflect a tradition passed down. When our food is but a mere parody of the culture it comes from, very little can be shared, learned, or enjoyed in the long run.

Experiences like the supra are as important in rebuilding the trust and culture that has been lost from our world as the recipes and culture being lost in the slop of the machine that is being churned out every day.

This past weekend I spent two, wonderful days at the gorgeous Lake Junaluska Retreat Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. The occasion? An event called Southeastuary is a conference inspired by the Estuary Movement, started by California pastor Paul Vanderklay.

Without going into laborious detail, the Estuary movement finds its nucleus in the “Estuary Protocol,” which seeks to bring people together for deep, in-person conversations where everyone has a chance to speak and learn about their fellow man. Southeastuary featured a mix of conversations between selected speakers and several estuary breakout sessions, each with roughly eight people.

Without knowing what to expect, I had what some call “the Cadillac” estuary experience with my estuary group being a mix of estuary veterans and newbies. And I have to agree with the moniker.

If I am noticing a thread in the writings of my Substack, it is the idea of “being a local” that is emerging as a panacea of sorts for the ailments of “the meaning crisis” many people are facing in the modern world. My conversations with folks both within the protocol and between sessions seem to confirm that people yearn for a sense of community and explore various ways to rebuild the physical framework.

Phrases such as “intentional community” or “optimistic doomerism” resonated with a few of the ideas I am working through, but the main takeaway for me was the importance of embodiment.

Regardless of whether you live in a new urbanist neighborhood or the stretches of suburbia, you will never truly be able to appreciate the ideas of “being a local” without learning the importance (and practicing) of embodiment.

As technology progresses, we become further and further disentangled with what it means to be “embodied.” A simple example, we attended an off-site event on Friday night with the Appalachian artist Murphy Campbell at The Scottsman pub in beautiful downtown Waynesville, NC. I had the pleasure of talking to her before and after her performance, and one thing she lamented was the loss of artistry in the folk scene.

People believe they can learn how to play a banjo, mandolin, or fiddle from watching someone on YouTube, which disentangles the art from the art form. YouTube can teach you how to manipulate an instrument, but it cannot teach you how to play it like a real person next to you can. When anyone learns to do anything, they are not simply learning to do it for themselves, but essentially copying the style of what someone else does, but with their own personal mechanics.

YouTube flattens that distribution and enforces a Communist-esque distribution of art, similar to how artificial intelligence “creates” pictures, videos, or text. (I refuse to go any further in talking about AI as that was quite a contentious discussion). The lack of embodiment in how we buy most things (in the age of Amazon and delivery), interact with our food (in the age of the supermarket and DoorDash), and traverse our communities (in the age of self-driving cars and airplanes) is a much bigger piece of how we repair our world than I previously gave thought.

What use is it to create beautiful cities, towns, and villages if the people have little to no connection because they are torn so far apart from their creation, development, and maintenance?

I consume a lot of media, honestly, too much media. I am reading articles and books, watching YouTube videos and shorts, and listening to podcasts and music. As I experience the firehose of hot takes and ideas, it is hard for some ideas to stand out over others.

One idea that really stuck out to me was Jordan Hall’s concept of “civium,” which he explored in detail on Matthew Wilkinson’s YouTube channel, mostly dedicated to church music and city architecture.

What stuck out to me was the idea that “a city cannot truly be beautiful,” which leads Jordan to expand on his ideas for human cohabitation that he calls “civium.” Instantly, I wanted to dive into writing a response to this idea with a defense of cities, but I realized it is more beneficial to explore the idea and build on it with how I see cities, towns, and the countryside developing in the near-ish future.

The Possibility of Intentional Living

Every other generation seems to develop some alt-cultures around intentional living, and some cultures have enduring models of this on their fringes (kibbutz and moshavs in Israel come to mind). In my anecdotal experience, I know people who are not just talking about living with their friends but actively building towards that reality by developing the skills and saving the money necessary to make it happen.

One of the major points of civium that I agree with is that people need to live with intentionality in their day-to-day lives. As cities and civilization have evolved, we have decreased our interaction with the things we need to survive and thrive. No longer are you buying groceries from the people who make them, the furniture from the people who craft them (or G-d forbid, making it yourself), or educating your kids in your cultural history yourself. We hand off all responsibility to people whose names we do not know and stories we do not share.

You do not have to become a hippie and form a commune in the mountains of California to live with intention. It starts with becoming a local and repairing the damage done by consumer culture.

Despite a lack of intentional living by the average person, the desire to be a local and live in a community that functions like one is still lying dormant in the everyman. Hurricane Helene demonstrated the strength of the community. Although the response resources we outsourced to the government were slow and ineffective, the community came together and realized they had really nice neighbors who were willing to help out in times of great need.

We don’t have to wait for natural disasters to drink coffee and break bread with our neighbors, and we don’t have to be cut off from civilization to think about becoming slightly more self-sufficient when it comes to our foodstuffs.

We also have to remember that the internet, while great, is not a replacement for in-person community. Generation X has produced a lot of media suggesting that technology replacing reality is inevitable, for better or worse. I disagree.

Sidelining Technology for Humanity

If you were a techno optimist like I was in the 2010s, every week brought a new technology that promised to change how we interacted with each other and send us to the stars. Skunk Works was working on nuclear fusion, graphene was going to build towers of Babel to space, and alternate reality glasses were going to become ubiquitous.

Fast forward 15 years, and none of that happened. While there have been some cool things that have happened (SpaceX, drones, and crystal clear online video calling), the role technology plays in our society acts more as a negative than a positive. We have more social media platforms than ever, but people report being lonely and depressed at increasingly awful levels.

Platforms such as Discord, Reddit, and Fortnite (yes - the video game) can bring people together to talk/discuss a central topic and form real connections, but these connections disappear once the cell tower slides off the mountain. When the internet goes down or the servers are slow, you see through the 1s and 0s and realize that you cannot rely on the digital space as your primary network because we are organic, spiritual beings.

At best, I think technology will function by bringing people together (as it has in the past) in physical space for communion. Even in the most social online spaces like professional video games (esports) there is something intrinsically special and unique about meeting people face to face at local area network (LAN) tournaments that will bring people often from around the globe to attend.

One example for me would be Facebook groups. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve recently gotten into mountain biking and without Facebook Groups or mapping application Trailforks, I probably would have missed out on the majority of the trails in my area.

Via Facebook Groups, it is possible to ride with former strangers who become friends and share a communal experience we otherwise might not be able to with our busy lives. When technology is at its best, it brings people together in person to do things without it (or with it in the background).

Imagining the Future of Community

While I might not be raging against the machine like Paul Kingsnorth, I am very skeptical that, as communication technology is refined, we will not need to be in close proximity to achieve benefits.

There have been several recent failures in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and Web 3, which have fallen extremely short of their lofty goals of ushering in a paradigm shift in connectivity. Despite a decentralization of talent post-COVID, mega regions and talent hubs like Silicon Valley and NYC remain the places to be, leading to despondency and despair among many young would-be tech entrepreneurs in up-and-coming cities such as Austin, Nashville, and Charlotte.

Incredible things can certainly be built across distances, but nothing can replace the magic of being in communion with a culture of innovation and creativity to build.

Regardless, cities are not just hubs of innovation and business; they are also places where we live, experience the arts and culture, and hopefully worship as well. While Charlotte, NC, or Greenville, SC might not be the next Silicon Valley, they are amazing in their own right.

As society becomes polarized at a national level, it has the opportunity to be brought closer together at the city level. We see this with people who might not love America the country, but they will proudly rep their city/county/state. The middle cities/regions of America are small enough where you can reasonably be involved in local politics without feeling like a cog in the machine, but are big enough to offer amenities of the larger locales (or access to them).

A major theme of the current presidency has been to use a mix of executive actions and the National Guard (or other Federal military personnel) to enforce goals the Republican Party wants to enact. Worried about crime in cities? Call the National Guard! Want to reduce drug prices? Write an executive order!

Ignoring the irony of Conservative criticism during the Obama administration (specifically regarding the quote, “I have a pen and a phone”), executive orders show how weak the Republican grasp on Congress is and the absolute lack of leadership and vision for the country.

Quick Primer on What the Problem Is

We often hear terms like conservative, progressive, liberal, and libertarian, but a more relevant term for modern politics is “reactionary.” Outside of folks on the fringes of mainstream politics, there has been very little in the way of positive policy since the Obama years. Whether you agreed with his ideas on policy is irrelevant because we are purely talking about putting forward a policy vision not based on reacting to what someone else is doing.

The Tea Party was a “reaction” to the Obama era spending and expansion of government. The Never Trumpers became a reactionary movement to the perceived illiberal policies of the Trump administration. The current movement of conservatism has been the closest thing to having a “positive vision,” but that positive vision seemed to be left behind in the election season (talk of new cities, increasing domestic innovation, and the ideas of a plan for healthcare stopped after the inaugaration).

The democrats (outside of folks like Mamdani) have based their entire appeal to voters on “not Trump,” which, despite his polarizing visage, does not seem to be bearing fruit. The Republicans are currently held in the grip of demagogues like Stephen Miller, who seem to be permanently angry and filled with as much joy as a mosquito.

People are not energized by reactionary politics, and in truth, very little gets done because there is no roadmap for what success looks like. Governors like Glenn Youngkin (VA) and Josh Stein (NC) (whether you agree with them again is irrelevant) at least have a positive vision for what they want their state to look like and have tangible results to show for it.

The Trump model of executive action to try and “make American cities safer” only results in marginal results that are: reversible with electoral loss of the White House, only impact relatively small portions of cities, and don’t make streets safer for driving due to reckless driving.

Let’s examine four solutions I’ve been considering for how the Federal system (if it were not dysfunctional) could incentivize cities to enhance safety for all.

Zoning Standards

Over the past two years, I have become tangentially involved in local politics and have learned a great deal about the abuses and bizarre zoning practices prevalent in American municipalities. I am of the strong opinion that zoning should be adopted at the national level, and then cities will more naturally grow based on what is viable economically, as opposed to what can be made legally (despite not having product-market fit).

I think we have all seen a restaurant try to take over a space with low foot traffic, insufficient parking, and a small (or too large) dining room, because it is the only viable location they are allowed to operate. We can refer to the demise of small businesses in suburbs that are placed on islands we call “strip malls,” with no foot traffic and often requiring dangerous turns that negatively affect traffic flow.

Our cities/towns/villages are not being allowed to grow normally, which makes them take bizarre shapes and force our current urban sprawl, which creeps into our rural areas, pissing off rural communities without any benefits for them (or the new residents) beyond building more unsustainable sprawl.

Federal Proposal: Adopt the Japanese zoning standards (with some carveouts I can expand on in a later stack) as a Federal zoning standard. Do not make it mandatory, but if a municipality wants to receive any Federal dollars, it must accept the standard. So you may have holdouts in some areas (which is fine), but the vast majority of municipalities will accept because Federal dollars are planned on in almost every project imaginable.

Transit Standards

I was originally going to focus on safety standards, but I think we need to be more aspirational in how we fund our transit systems in America. Ultimately, I think Federal dollars should be doled out for large-scale expansions like the Gateway Project (currently being held up by petty politics during the government shutdown). Still, cities need to have better funding mechanisms for public transit.

I don’t think public transit needs to be profitable, but it should be efficient with taxpayer dollars. Cities should work on sending penny sales taxes (or other long-term, stable funding measures) to voters to avoid the funding crunches we see in Philadelphia and Chicago. This program should have several phases.

Phase 1: Cities can qualify for funds to modernize rolling stock, eliminate or otherwise improve at-grade crossings, implement fare dodging countermeasures, and install platform screen doors. Qualification would be based on funding measures currently in place for basic operations and maintenance, current passenger safety metrics, and public safety at stations or rest areas.

Phase 2: Cities can remain qualified for funding if they meet a level of service that is considered safe, efficient, and cost-effective. The funds unlocked in phase 2 would go towards capital expansion projects like bridges, tunnels, or major expansions of service. The idea is to create metro systems that are clean, safe, and convenient, thereby improving ridership by enhancing trust in public transit.

There would be a yearly audit of eligible systems by the Federal government, and the criteria would be transparent and geared towards providing better outcomes for both citizens and visitors. All current projects considered for Federal dollars would obviously not be subject to these new standards, but any projects going forward would.

Vision Zero Pedestrian Safety Standards

While Republicans see public transit as a Communist plot to make everyone live in 15-minute cities, the vast majority of Americans are actually at risk every time they get behind the wheel of a vehicle. I got into this in my last Substack, but “Vision Zero” (zero car-related deaths) should be a national goal, not just a regional one.

This one is a lot tougher to enforce because Federal dollars for roads based on road deaths is probably something that is extremely politically nonviable. I would think that there needs to be the opposite approach.

Suppose a municipality or state DOT wants to implement a road diet or other structural engineering change to improve safety on roads with pedestrians in mind. In that case, the Federal government will provide 75% of the funds. If a state or municipality improves on metrics surrounding car and pedestrian safety, they can be eligible for new Federal dollars related to infrastructure needs.

America 2050 Intellectual Investment Program

Lastly, there needs to be a beefing up of our in house design/engineering talent at our state and Federal Departments of Transportations (DOT). Project costs often balloon when consultants, lawyers, and everyone else gets a piece of the action and government agencies are essentially powerless to stop it.

I am proposing a fund for states to add current engineers, architects, and other experts that would enable DOTs to bring more design and construction in house to reduce costs and improve our capacity to build faster. There would be a grant program for colleges and universities who offer engineering programs to send students overseas to intern with other countries doing things better than we are so we can take that expertise and expand on it as opposed to paying through the nose for it.

I also believe we need to make a serious investment in our trades programs. I love institutions like the College of St. Joseph the Worker in Steubenville, Ohio, but if we want to reshape our economy into be an economy of builders not lawyers we need to have another 100 Colleges of St. Joseph the Worker.

What additions would you make? Do you have additional fixes you’d like to see implemented?

I don’t know when it became woke to want safe, walkable streets, but according to the Department of Transportation, projects that prioritize pedestrianized spaces at the cost of cars are apparently too progressive.

As a self-proclaimed “Christian urbanist,” this annoyed me especially because I know the typical responses to this proclamation all come from the urbanist left. “See the right just wants to kill everyone with cars and diabetes because no one can walk anywhere anymore.” or “Haha I thought the right was, ‘pro-life’ but they enable pro death policies!”

While the criticisms are pretty spot on, I feel that the current car-centric planning and design that has become a culture war topic has never been given much thought on the right. So, why do we want to prioritize walking? And how on earth is taking the road back from cars not woke? Well…

The World Before Cars

While we only get to experience the joy of mingling with friends, family, and visitors in a fully pedestrianized space during festivals, this was the norm before 1910. Unfortunately, due to the rapid pace of change in the last 100 years, it seems abnormal to think of a world that did not have wide streets or personal modes of transportation available to everyone, regardless of their relative economic status.

There was a question that went viral some time ago asking, “where did the Romans park their chariots near the Colosseum?” which seems completely normal in a world of football stadiums surrounded by thousands of parking lots but of course is absolutely asinine if any other context. While certain places in Europe have eschewed car-centric infrastructure in villages and smaller cities, Americans gleefully destroyed as much history as possible to put in new roads, strip malls, gas stations, and parking lots for their shiny new toys.

But in context, can you actually blame them?

The American Dream

The American mind has always been far more optimistic than her European neighbors because we tend to do a lot of winning. We conquered the lower 48 against stiff competition! We won not one but two world wars! We conquered the atom and split her asunder! We tamed rivers and toppled empires!

So, if someone is selling you a product that will enable you to conquer, as an American, odds are you will say yes. The future was supposed to be the automobile, and even as an urbanist/railfan, I can recognize the immediate benefits of the automobile in a world where trains were slow, buses were stinky, and planes were not quite yet affordable or ubiquitous.

The car was sold as freedom. The freedom to go off-road and explore the wilds, the freedom to travel scenic highways and byways, and the freedom to pick where you stop whenever you want! It is honestly a no-brainer, especially when the interstates were freshly paved and the cars actually looked wicked cool compared to what we have today.

Of course, no one really anticipated the population to skyrocket, and if everyone has a car, well, that also means a pesky thing called traffic, which leads to accidents and, of course, a loss of freedom. That bottleneck has not deterred people from believing that traffic is solvable as long as those pesky Yankees just move back to Ohio and New Jersey and we install one more lane!

The Pesky Problem With Freedom

Unfortunately, having cars on the road means an inherent danger to pedestrians. You can look at this from two different lenses. A safetyist view, “we must eliminate all threats to people, which means we can have no cars on the road,” or a practical perspective, “we must reduce interactions between people walking and bicycling and driving their cars to reduce needless deaths.”

Just because we are making our streets safer does not mean we are trying to: a) impede on freedom of movement, b) infringe on people with cars ability to get where they need to go, or c) worship the pedestrian as a golden calf. It just means we don’t want to see people die if we don’t have to.

One thing people will often cite is, “My tax dollars go to the roads and I should be allowed to use them as I please.” But people who live in a city that is walkable are often not driving, but their roads are usually widened or otherwise made amenable to car traffic not at their benefit but at their expense, to accommodate out-of-city suburban traffic.

In the DOT’s statement, they cited “impacts on cars’ ability to travel at high speeds” as to the reason why they would not fund these supposed “radical” investments in public safety. But a simple physics lesson would tell you why you would not want objects weighing over a ton moving at high speeds around pedestrians or animals.

As Jerry Seinfeld once said, “This isn’t going to be good for anybody.” It should be basic common sense why cars should drive below 25 mph near walking traffic (for awareness, quicker braking time, and a lower chance of fatality upon impact), but there is something about being behind the wheel that just cannot abide by such measures.

According to the SC Department of Public Safety, SC sees 145,761 traffic collisions per year with 1,047 deaths. There is a crash every 3.6 minutes on average. Why is this acceptable?

There is zero outrage at these numbers, despite being almost double the amount of homicides per year (595 in 2022). Zero!!!!

Obviously, many of these deaths would not be prevented by the measures on the chopping block, but our culture around what we allow cars to get away with is obviously extremely out of whack and needs to be brought in alignment with our other modes of transportation.

What a Positive Model Can Look Like

I can reference Hoboken’s Vision Zero success in eliminating traffic deaths, but most places in America are not as politically progressive as Hoboken. How does small or medium-sized America create great spaces that we want to spend time (and money!!) in without being “woke?”

First of all, isn’t it so stupid that we have to play these culture war games when we want to talk about positive policy visions? That we have to couch our words in terms anemable to our political sensibilities?

Second, to create great spaces, we must recognize how people move around and design spaces that enable them to do so safely. Two cities here in Upstate, South Carolina have built a system of parking garages and small (but convenient) surface lots that enable highly walkable environments that are accessed by parking on the periphery so cars are not speeding down the main walking streets.

For those looking to access businesses but who have issues with walking long distances, Greer offers a fixed-route shuttle from Tuesday through Sunday to help you move around more efficiently.

Downtown Greenville, SC has a charming (and free) trolley that also operates on a fixed-stop system with stops at a mix of parking garages and highlights of Greenville’s growing walkable downtown.

The mode share of people driving cars in North America is unlikely to change significantly anytime soon, and that is honestly okay. However, if you want beautifully dense, walkable spaces now, you must build them with today's realities in mind. Absent massive spending and eminent domain, public transit projects are unlikely to thrive without dense, car-lite, or car-free areas.

We can build those first and develop with a future in mind that creates more public transit opportunities without disenfranchising the vast majority of the population that drives because that is what our country is currently centered around.

I know I wrote about how “beauty will not save the world,” but if you read the piece, you’ll know it was *mostly* tongue in cheek. Last night, I was working through my YouTube podcast queue, and I finally got to the (below) video from Jonathan Pageau featuring a big reason this Substack exists (Andrew Gould) and Michael Diamant.

While my first stack was written in frustration over a local road that had not been fixed for several years (finally paved as of two weeks ago!), I have contemplated putting thoughts to digital ink about “Christian urbanism” and how it can fix a lot of what people observe in “the meaning crisis.”

What is the Meaning Crisis?

If I can explain the meaning crisis in short, it is a perceived decay in people’s ability to find meaning in life. This despair has always existed at some level, but due to a rapid rise in the deconstruction of long-held beliefs, an increase in global conflicts/natural disasters, and the advent of the internet and all of its issues, people are at an all-time low when it comes to living a “meaningful life.”

The rise of the conversation around the meaning crisis has led to voices such as Jordan B. Peterson, Mary Harrington, and Ezra Klein (I tried to shoot for a decently wide net) talking about issues they otherwise might not. These voices (and many many others) have led to the creation of spaces of discourse across the fruited plains of the internet which have influenced a lot of my current thoughts/writings.

Five years ago, if you had asked me about dating, liberal ideals, urbanism, or transportation, I probably wouldn't have had any sophisticated (at least for a zillennial) answers to give you, because I simply didn't care. So what changed, and why do I believe in *Christian* urbanism so deeply?

What Makes Christian Urbanism Christian?

There is a term often thrown around the Evangelical Christian right called “Judeo-Christian beliefs” to denote that countries like America were founded on ideas from the Christian and Jewish faith traditions. Unfortunately, the term is both accurate (in that both traditions have contributed to American values) and inaccurate (upon closer inspection, the differences between the two traditions are substantial), which makes it somewhat of a misnomer.

I bring that up because while a lot of how I view “Christian urbanism” can be reflected in Jewish ideas on settlement, to conflate the two is beyond my pay grade. How I view Christian urbanism is a return to cities that are at their heart pointing up towards the Heavens with the tallest building being the church. The city would be of medium density with zoning that permits a wide variety of condos, townhomes, single-family homes, businesses, and parks that are able to be reached on foot.

“Zeke, that seems fairly radical! Surely, the evangelical right would never endorse such a liberal sounding city!”

I present to you my home of six years, Charleston, South Carolina!

Nicknamed the, “Holy City” due to the tallest legal building being St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, Charleston has stood as a beacon of American urbanism. In addition to the historic Lutheran presence there are beautiful: Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, AME, French Hugenot, Greek Orthodox, and even Baptist churches. Even when a tradition does not normally focus on creating beautiful, ornate buildings, the culture of Charleston enforces a baseline of beauty all around it.

The Christian ideal has never looked like soulless suburbia filled with “vinyl villages” of copy/paste mcmansions or the trailer parks that the left seem to think every MAGA voter hails from. The Christian ideal is something beautiful and worth preserving, something that reflects the goodness and beauty given to use by our Creator. Something that everyone can both appreciate and use without fear of assault by a criminal or a car.

God designed humans not cars (as great as the Ferrari LaFerrari is) and our surroundings should reflect that. When people can walk/bike in their day to day they are healthier (without having to take Ozempic or go to the gym) and are much more likely to patronize small businesses because they don’t have to find a place to park.

Downtown Charleston has its issues: too many hotels not enough places to live, rising traffic and insufficient transit options, a preservation society that is not always forward thinking, but it does enough right to serve as a good look for how any size municipality should build going forward.

What Does an Ideal Future Look Like for Ezekiel Carsella?

My obsession with improving urbanism started with my frustrations around the lack of non-car intercity travel options in the Southeast. Suppose Charleston had the intercity rail travel options it used to. In that case, I can imagine taking more trips to places like Charlotte, Atlanta, and Raleigh, where the only options are driving or expensive short-haul flights.

Making matters worse, after graduation, I had to move to the suburbs, where I lived with some friends, but essentially stopped seeing anyone I did not live with on a regular basis due to the friction caused by traffic and car-centric chores. No more walking to the grocery store or stopping at Sabatinos for pizza.

I noticed that the subdivision we lived in (and the larger town of Johns Island, SC) felt largely atomized. Everyone was self-absorbed in their households, and outside of their church or local bar counter of choice, they were not really united in any sort of common culture (outside of hating the traffic). This is not the future that we were promised and it is not the future that we have to have.

The atomization of the suburbs and megacities (replace traffic with anonymity due to sheer number of people) needs to be replaced with cities that have a common thread that binds people together. Whether that looks like Charleston, SC, Brookline, MA, or Carmel, IN matters not. What matters is that we start asking ourselves, “why don’t our politicians provide a positive vision” as opposed to reactionary policies that are intended to play catch-up, not set standards.

Why Being a Local Isn’t Actually Hard

There is an idea that being a local requires living in a place for 20+ years, having a family, and being involved at every level of participation. This is not the case. Being a local is simply interacting with the world you live in beyond your home.

“Zeke that is pretty silly. I go to the grocery store. I pump my gas. I go out to eat. Doesn’t that make me a local?”

No. Being a local isn’t about knowing where the trendy spot for hot pot is. Being a local is being recognized by your favorite barista and talking to your fellow regulars for an hour. It is running into someone you met at the gym, walking around your neighborhood, and planning to go together. It is helping someone at your church build a nursery for their next child.

Being a local is what removes the isolation of living in a city and replaces it with living in a community. Too often, our cities become mini fiefdoms of nuclear families in their white picket compounds who are terrified to talk to the neighbors for fear of the unknown.

While it might be hard for an introverted person to accomplish this, it is not impossible. Going to sit at a counter where a barista, bartender, or sommelier is paid to converse can help you break the ice in communicating with your environment, leading to a hopeful snowball effect for your social network.

“Zeke why do I need to create a community? I have friends I text and see once in a while. I have family I occasionally visit. I promise I am happy!”

Don’t Be an Anti-Local

It is very easy to confuse being a local and what I like to call an, “anti-local.” The anti-local does the things the local does, but without the intention of making a map of communion. They go to a coffee shop but they never dwell. They order pizza but it is always takeout or delivery. They love trying new restaurants but never think to interact with anyone at the restaurant.

The anti-local refuses to interact or engage with their environment because they think they live in a boring place and see it as a stepping stone to a “cool city” like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. The problem with the anti-local is they see a city like a computer sees a basketball player: all statistics no depth.

The Introverted Dilemma

All of my advice on being a local is seemingly in plain violation of the introvert’s sensibilities. Talking to random people, initiating friendships, and spending time surrounded by humans is a death sentence to my introverted friends.

But to be social is to be human. While it might not be preferred, we cannot have the luxury of preference in every situation. To be uncomfortable or to be alone? Which would be your preference?

Being a local is more than just knowing the specials at your favorite dinner recommendation; it is to be a part of a larger community that has historically been completely normal. It reduces your anxiety about your neighbors because you know your neighbors. Now granted, your neighbors might not be Mother Theresa and her convent, but the devil you know is better than the devil you do not.

Being a part of your community makes you and your community safer because you are less likely to fear a friend or an acquaintance over a stranger. Am I saying this is completely without risk? Of course not! But the West was not settled on mere sure bets, but far far riskier bets than anything we can accomplish in the 21st Century.

Can You Be a Local in Suburbia?

While urbanists are the sworn enemy of suburban sprawl, there is a certain misnomer that all suburbs are bad. You will sometimes hear of the “streetcar suburb” aka a suburb generally close to a city’s historical center that was serviced by streetcars and are now generally very pleasant, walkable neighborhoods that fetch high prices. Yet, most times we are referring to the cul-de-sacs that seemingly sprout out of nowhere on former farms or other greenspace and bring with them cookie cutter homes, nosey HOA members, and car traffic.

Despite all of the negatives of a suburb, it is still very possible to be a local in the heart of suburbia. To be a local is to know the heartbeat of an area which is always the people. While the burbs are often just places people live, they are never purely so one-dimensional. The suburbs contain places of worship (some even monuments to beauty in a place otherwise lacking), restaurants, and small businesses that might require a car to reach but are still places you can form lifelong relationships.

The average urbanist may tell you that you are being robbed of forming these relationships because you cannot walk or take transit to do everything you like. They are simply wrong. Yes, driving makes your trips infinitely more intentional, but it does not mean you are by definition being robbed of a chance to have a flourishing social life.

If you live in the south, having a decent-sized SUV/pickup is borderline essential to your social life if you enjoy hunting, mountain biking, boating, riding/hauling a dirtbike, or anything else in the outdoors with your boys. Easier access to the outdoors can open your life up to a whole new set of friends/adventures especially with Facebook groups. There has never been an easier time to meet people even unintentionally regardless of where you live, you are only limited by your imagination (or lack thereof).

Obviously, I want more people to enjoy the joys of convenient transit, (safely) walkable streets, and locally owned retail, but I want more urban spaces to preserve the great outdoors and our relationship to it. Not because I feel that everyone *has* or should live in a strictly urban setting.

Whether you are in the heart of town or on the outskirts of civilization, there is a wellspring of humanity just waiting for you to tap into,

and I pray y’all find it! Fight with me in the comments if y’all think this rant was off base, I promise I will be civil!

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Why Beauty Will Not Save the World

If you ask five urbanists for their most important metric for urban renewal you will get ten different answers. One such strain of thought is that we need to place beauty above all other factors because (as the great Dostoyevsky said) “beauty will save the world.”

Unfortunately, I am no longer convinced that that is the case. Why? Because we had several thousands years of beauty, and mankind’s instincts have been to prioritize comfort and wealth over beauty. Without making a deep philosophical argument about the different shifts in Western society post WW1 and WW2, I think it is fairly self evident in our newer building styles that cost is king and beauty as an intrinsic metric is essentially absent.

Even in a newer country like the United States (compared to the old and famous states of Europe and the Near East), the beauty inherent to older architecture is readily apparent.

If beauty could *save the world* we would not create schools of developers who build cookie cutter cul-de-sacs and five over one mixed use buildings that look copy pasted all over our beautiful country. The death of regional architecture is not as obvious in the Northeast’s great cities as it is in the Southeast, but the ever-creeping new school minimalism is aiming to replace the art deco/gothic/dutch architectural styles of NYC.

Look at the new World Trade Center station created by the Porth Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH). While it certainly casts a striking and memorable shape and is extremely clean on the inside, it lacks the charm and depth of the ageing Grand Central Station.

While no expense was spared for this station ($4bn) that serves 18 million+ passengers per year, the design does nothing to evoke the city it serves.

In all of the cities I visited, beautiful, old buildings served as the cornerstones of neighborhoods especially in New England. While Manhattan added tons of density via taller glass skyscrapers, the neighborhoods of Boston were built around gorgeous, older midrise buildings.

These neighborhoods were safe, clean, and seemingly prosperous, but there was no sense that the beauty of the buildings were transforming the people around them. Sure, the property values of living in these desirable neighborhoods speak for themselves, but these neighborhoods are hardly paragons of what conservative commentators such as Jonathan Pageau would expect.

Am I arguing against beautiful buildings? Hardly. Merely noticing that buildings or creating art does not create or change the culture long term. People may rally around symbols and icons (much of the history of the USS Constitution was about Bostonians rallying to protect the oldest active navy vessel), but normal people’s day to day lives require something with a more active ingredient to change (for the better or worse).

What I can say for certain is that as a single, 25-year-old fully remote worker in America, I have grappled with my future as a homeowner/landowner/city dweller. I yearn for both the walkable, dense city filled with fun restaurants, trendy stores, and strangers to encounter, and the yurt on a 10-acre wooded lot with a vegetable garden, trails to explore, and animals to encounter.

Like many, my competing desires (or as zillenials would say - the two wolves inside of me) feed into the expanding surburban sprawl that has spread as a plague throughout the countryside. To combat this, I have decided to try and create some rules for ‘ordo necessitatum’ (Orders of Necessity) to determine what I should or should not advocate for.

What Do We Desire?

A common question that can take us a lot of different directions. Let’s subdivide our desires into several categories that will make it easier for sorting.

• Community

• Safety

• Fun

• Logistics

• Convenience

Community can be viewed as a spectrum of living in total isolation outside of your family unit to living in a dense neighborhood surrounded by friends/family/strangers. A common refrain amongst zoomers is the desire to live in a commune or farm surrounded by their friends and family, but are largely unable to because of a lack of liquidity. The inverse can also be true with gen X and boomers as they age and find themselves lacking in meaningful friendships or estranged from their children/close relations. We are communal animals (for better or worse) who are more properly oriented towards meeting after church for Sunday dinner than we are to be monks on Mt. Athos (not that there is anything wrong with that!).

Safety is a calculation of risk tolerance. In a denser, diverse neighborhood, the chance of crime goes up. While rural populations can have some really weird crime metrics, the odds are significantly lower that you will face issues from your neighbors. The wildlife are a bit more unpredictable.

What do you like to do for fun? Are you a fan of climbing Colorado 14ers in your Subaru Outback on the weekends? Or do you prefer trying the latest culinary sensation you saw on Tiktok before you go see the latest Marvel movie? Neither is inherently better than the other, but the desire to have every culinary style known to mankind + low density developments are not exactly good bedfellows.

Logistics feels like an odd inclusion, but the logistics of our day to day life cannot be ignored. If you are adept at: carpentry, raising/slaughtering animals, growing vegetables, and anything else that requires dirty hands, you are more likely to thrive with your only trips to civilization being by a 30 minute drive to the nearest town. If your only encounter with the outdoors is via YouTube or Netflix, the traditionalist supply chain would be a massive shock and extremely detrimental to your existence.

Convenience! A pasttime as American as hot dogs and baseball. For some, climbing into the car and having everything built around cars within a 20 minute drive is considered convenient. For others, having all of your essentials within a 15 minute walk (the dreaded 15-minute city of woke-right nightmares) is the ideal for a polity. In America, the dance of urbanism requires having enough space for cars and “good urbanism,” but oftentimes the compromises leave a lot to be desired leaving everyone a little bit miserable.

With our parameters set, I will go about ranking what I find most important to me at this stage of my life.

1. Convenience - Call me George Costanza because yes I do live with my parents and their needs means I would prefer being able to only have to spend 25 minutes in the car one way. Living in a semi-rural area means that’s frequently not possible, but as our area grows that is rapidly changing.

2. Logistics - I have a small raised bed in the backyard and I’m semi-competent at fixing things, but I am more city slicker than redneck.

3. Safety - I have no desire to worry about my neighbor’s intentions and prefer to feel safe on walks in the park or downtown.

4. Fun - How fun can a guy with a Substack be? (I kid.) Upon moving from Charleston, SC back to Upstate, SC , I decided to get into mountain biking which has become a pretty big hobby now (and investment) which means I would hate to move somewhere without good trails and would prefer to see investment in trail infrastructure where I live.

5. Community - While I thrived in college in a very community driven context, I am happy to limit my interactions with others as much as possible.

Based on this ordo necessitatum, my desire of avoiding people and living in the yurt would be squashed because it would not be possible due to my lack of off grid logistics and needs for convenience. Likewise, my desire to live in a fun city would be outweighed by needs of convenience and safe.

Understanding Human Behaviors Via Conflicting Desires

I hope this was helpful in navigating how we might want several things, but when you lay them out side by side, you realize that they are in massive conflict with each other. It only takes 5-10 minutes of reading Facebook comments to see all of the different things people want and how truly unworkable they are. For example, desiring, "'more fun, new restaurants” is impossible when the cost of living is higher than possible on a line cook’s salary (staring at you, Mt. Pleasant, SC).

The inverse is also unfortunately true. Downtown Charleston has prioritized building hotels to cater to tourists, but has done this at the expense of doing anything fun downtown that isn’t drinking, ghost/history tours, eating, and shopping (RIP The Alley).

Did you find this interesting or useful? Please let me know and hopefully I will have another Substack coming out next weekend.

Bloated Government - Dissatisfied Citizens

Regarding issues people can feel, few rank higher than road quality/congestion, especially in small-town America. As farmland becomes subdivisions and abandoned lots turn into fast food restaurants, the roads see higher use that turns into multiple frustrations for drivers.

With public transit being non-existent, how do small towns cope with the burden of fixing/repairing roads? In my experience, they unfortunately cannot. Several issues dovetail to create a near-impossible mountain to climb, and raising property taxes is a sacred cow that can only be done once otherwise new city-council members will be elected.

The issues are:

• Too many roads for too little in tax revenue

• Increased usage and overreliance on roads means they need more frequent repair

• Lack of skilled workers in road repair

• Long wait times leading to increased costs to fix

While penny taxes get passed (but not always) and county officials do their best to put signs saying, “Your penny tax fixed this road/bridge” the sentiment around taxes is generally hostile. I’ve noticed that people who argue for lower taxes also want the government invested in high capital cost projects (roads/highways) that are incapable of turning a profit only because they see an intrinsic value in their existence.

Unfortunately, basic road maintenance gets thrown into long queues and the famous Parks & Rec scene becomes more of a reality than a throwaway joke.

A Libertarian Solution to a Democratic Problem

I was inspired by a story I read about a group of young adults in Oakland, California who were repairing potholes under the cover of night, because the government essentially stopped fixing the roads. While most people would say, “Good for them! They are doing what the government should,” and they are in one way right, having these repair pirates can be problematic in several ways.

Our public works have standards for a reason and if by attempting to fix a pothole, sinkhole, or other road issue they create a new one, the legal liabilities can be long and costly. Yet, outsourcing this work to private entities with some level of oversight could free up city/county/state resources to focus on larger capital projects with better timelines for success.

How do we make this work? Does this already happen?

My idea is for a jurisdiction to have a set of guidelines for road quality and repair, and offer limited slots for “letters of marque” that would allow private entities to fulfill maintenance contracts as they appear. You could create a fixed budget item for this mission, and freelancers would have to submit line-item invoices with a capped labor cost to be paid.

This way you can encourage passionate people who are motivated to do a job well done without price-gouging the taxpayer. We already see this happen with Request for Proposals (RFPs) in other areas, such as trail building, but recent DOGE budget cuts have devastated the AmeriCorps. As taxpayers notice, “hey, these roads are actually getting fixed,” I am pretty certain they would be more likely to approve small tax raises in the future, but giving them fewer services for more money is a recipe for disaster.

TL;DR: Use private sector labor to fix government-owned roads to reduce costs, timelines, and free up public sector resources for bigger projects. Better road quality means happier residents and safer communities.

Future Content

I really wanted this substack to be more urbanist/transit-focused, but I don’t know if the world needs yet another zillennial ranting about planes, trains, and automobiles. However, this issue (and prodding by some friends) led me to make my first Substack post!