CHRISTIANA is a movement of laypeople and pastors building communities rooted in Catholic Social Teaching that are designed for holistic sustainability.
What is Holistic Sustainability
Holistic sustainability aims to meet all the needs to maintain a flourishing and lasting (sustainable) community. This includes demographic, economic, environmental, physical, social, and visual considerations.
DEMOGRAPHIC
The community must be able to accommodate all ages and incomes. There must be housing options for lower class, middle class, and the upper class, all in immediate vicinity of each other. Housing options must be large enough to support growing families with many children as well as single people, young newly married couples, and retired couples.
ECONOMIC
The community must foster ample economic opportunity for all members through job availability and entrepreneurial endeavors. As many goods as possible must be produced within the community in order to support the members of said community.
ENVIRONMENTAL
The community must be built with considerations to the environment it occupies. It should be built in areas that minimize natural disasters and build infrastructure that limits the settlement’s impact on the surrounding ecosystem.
PHYSICAL
The community must be built in a manner that its tax base can indefinitely maintain the infrastructure the community relies on. This discourages sprawling lots and suburban developments and favors dense neighborhoods and compact villages with walkable streets.
SOCIAL
The community must be constructed in a way that fosters communal interaction rather than seclusion. There must be a plethora of public spaces for both orientation and belonging. People must be familiar with their neighbors and be ready to provide assistance as needed.
VISUAL
The community must be objectively beautiful. Its architecture should be distinct both in material sourced from the local area as well as illustrate collective value, history, and culture as the community inhabiting it. This throughput is necessary for establishing civic pride and identity.
Demographic Sustainability
Demographic Sustainability is accomplished by providing room for the growth of families and the development of multi-generational communities. The needs of each demographic has great variation, and communities need variation in construction to support these variations in demographics.
Consider Housing for All Ages, Incomes, and Futures
In the early 20th Century, the intelligentsia in the Western World was reeling from the timeless phenomenon of slums. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution promoting the idea that society is “progressing,” reformers altruistically dreamed of constructing new cities in vacant rural lands for the working class to move to in order to eliminate densely packed slums in the urban centers. Publications highlighted the lower-class conditions with great impetus that something should be done to address the plight of the lower classes.
It is here that the trend of suburbanization began. While initial settlements remained well-connected to the central cities, the advent of the car changed everything. The railways were seen as monopolistic and self-serving, and the car offered a uniquely innovative liberation. Different publications in popular culture and marketing began extolling the benefits of “a lawn with privacy from neighbors.”
Yet what has occurred in these sterile Levittowns is that family sizes have been limited. Young couples with no children and elderly empty-nesters may not need the extra bedrooms, but everything on the market has them. This drives up housing prices as the extra bedrooms cost more. Alternatively, a growing family or one wanting to live with multiple generations under one roof is unable to as houses with multiple bedrooms have become scarce. This also increases cost on different members of the family as they now need to get their own homes and are less able to pool their money. Furthermore, what is a couple to do if they want more than three children yet live in a two-bedroom? Lastly, the construction of the suburbs was initially greeted with much fanfare as there was ample land on the periphery of urban centers. However, over many decades, the ample land has not become a permanent solution. By this strategy, cities can only grow as fast as the land available in the immediate vicinity. While this marginally increases the area of a city, the population of the people within that city can grow many factors faster than what the city is built for. This can be from both young families and people moving into the city. The residents of cities themselves may be in opposition to the growth of their cities, anything from unattended children to unfamiliar faces in increasing numbers to people that lack an appreciation of the city like older residents. These factors among others is causing the collapse of birth rates like never before in history and an unprecedented rise in homelessness as attaining housing has become cost prohibitive.
Communities must allow for the continual construction of a variety of housing options for a variety of demographics.
In order to prevent both slums, homelessness, and demographic collapse, communities must have a variety of housing options available. In the event that a specific type of housing is in demand and lacking in supply, zoning codes must be loose enough to allow for the healthy growth of the city. The growth of a city and the growth of the population go hand in hand. Attempts to stifle urban growth inevitably stifle the growth of the population. Life is a beautiful thing. The greatest guarantee of social welfare are prospering children able to support their parents. Even in a utilitarian sense, having several children diversifies investments so that no one child will have to bear the full responsibility of looking after their parents. The ability for each and every demographic to thrive will produce an unaccounted for social safety net to keep the community prosperous and healthy for generations to come.
Economic Sustainability
Economic Sustainability is accomplished by maintaining ample employment and entrepreneurial opportunities that provide people with sufficient pay to cover the cost of living within the community. While every community would hope to have this, certain practices foster more economic opportunities while others discourage its development.
Keep Wealth as Close to Home as Possible
In the era of Free Trade and Globalization, the priority of people’s purchases and investments has revolved around what is most ideal for the end user. This has resulted in vendors having to complete on a global market to try to create competitively superior businesses. This is borderline impossible for many communities to keep pace with society’s development. For those with income, this is less of a concern. However, for those without income, this is the difference between life and death.
The U.S. has long run a trade deficit, which many economists say isn’t harmful. But when breaking it down, the trade balance includes both goods and services. Service-based businesses—like tech, finance, and consulting—generate high profits with fewer workers, making them more desirable in modern economies. In contrast, goods-based businesses—producing food, tools, machines, and art—require more labor for less profit.
The shift toward a service economy is seen as progress, a hallmark of a “developed economy.” Furthermore, investing in global Fortune 500 companies is seen as a secure investment. However, not everyone can work in services; not every company can be on the NYSE. While wealth may trickle down from high-income earners to lower-income earners, this depends on spending patterns. Regardless of income bracket, the majority of people chose to invest their funds into a financial system that is doing less with their money. When money is neither spent locally nor invested locally, lower-income earners are left behind, deepening poverty and contributing to issues like crime, homelessness, and drug use due to despair in the system.
The worst effects of this has been kept at bay by the current macro-economic cycle: (1) Both Higher-Income and Lower-Income Earners give funds to Competitively Superior Businesses by buying their goods and services as well as investing in their stocks (2) those businesses secure their wealth by buying highly valuable and secure US Treasury Bonds (3) the Federal Government takes the proceeds from these sales and uses them to fund Social Programs and miscellaneous ideologically-backed grants (4) the Social Programs go towards Lower-Income Earners through subsidized services and the grants employ government workers and government adjacent contractors to do politically motivated work. However, what this cycle severely lacks is depriving people of agency and initiative, patronizing masses of people and encouraging complacency. These are not the fruits of a productive and responsible populace nor can it last.
It is the responsibility of everyone in the community to encourage economic opportunity.
Giving people economic opportunities rewards virtues like initiative, discipline, and responsibility. These habits naturally spill over into other areas of life—strengthening relationships, deepening community ties, and fostering a sense of personal investment in the common good. Buying as close to home as possible reinforces this cycle: it supports local jobs, keeps the threat of unemployment at bay, and creates space for everyone to contribute meaningfully. As economic activity stays within the community, it multiplies opportunities and invites people of all talents and trades to pursue dignified, virtuous lives. The broader and more diverse the community's support, the more pathways open for individuals to thrive—not just economically, but personally and spiritually.