While I am fascinated by online communities, I am more interested in face-to-face lived communities. While there is an ache in many hearts for actual community and intimate relationships, we live in ways that counteract such desires. But some people are trying to change the coldness of dead city space into lived places.

Thomas Merton once said “”A city is something you do with space. A city is made up of rooms, buildings, streets. It is a crowd of occupied spaces. The character of the city is set by the way the rooms are lived in, the way the buildings are lived in, and what goes on in the streets. The street can be inhabited if the people on it begin to make their life credible by changing their environment. Living is more than submission; it is creation. We can begin now to change this street and this city. We will begin to discover our power to transform our world.”

The Project for Public Places sent out an interesting article today about some Zealous Nuts who are transforming their public places. Knoxville has a few folks who have been visioning a new South Waterfront. The city recently got on board and it looks like some exciting things may happen there.