In Christ, It’s ‘Yes In My Backyard’

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Beyond these familial benefits, for Christians, up-zoning can make it easier to worship and minister where we live, to make our church community an integral part of our neighborhood. (The very name of NIMBYism’s opposite, YIMBYism—“yes in my backyard”—sounds like an invitation to a church potluck, doesn’t it?) Up-zoning can also give us new opportunities to practice loving our neighbors by literally giving us more neighbors. “One implication of extreme-separation zoning laws is that they reduce our contact with people of other socioeconomic classes and thus reduce our potential for compassion,” writes pastor Eric O. Jacobsen in Sidewalks in the Kingdom, which delves deeper than I can here into the importance of urban design for the outworking of Christian faith.

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