Conundrum

In his book called Happy City: Transforming our Lives through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery explains that urban design has an effect on the way that people live. Here is a good quote.

We have this Conundrum. The detached house in distant dispersal (of a modern suburb) is a blunt instrument: it is a powerful tool for retreating with your nuclear family, and perhaps your direct neighbours, but a terrible base to nurture other intensities and relationships. Your social life must be scheduled and formal. Serendipity disappears in the time eaten up by the commute, in the space between windshield and the garage doors. On the other hand, life in places that feel too crowded to control can leave us so over-stimulated and exhausted that we retreat into solitude. Either way, we miss out on the wide range of relationships that can make life richer and easier.

What we need are places that help us to moderate our interactions with strangers without having to retreat entirely.

This suggests that it is extremely difficult to establish a "real church" in which people can really love one another in a modern suburb. Modern urban design is hostile to the body of Christ.