The Common Good and the Global Emergency God and the Built Environment

Planning and architecture have to be understood in relation to climate change and peak oil, and the concept of the common good is key to understanding how important this is. Leading on from his previous book, A Theology of the Built Environment, T. J. Gorringe provides a theoretical and political framework of the common good, applying this to the built environment. This framework is used to discuss and highlight issues regarding place, transport, food and farming, and as such explains the relation of Christianity to the built world in which we live. Exploring new themes in the context of the concern about climate change and resource depletion, Gorringe provides an innovative account, covering a wide range of source matter and illustrating the connections in modern theology and ethics.

Preface; 1. The common good and the built environment; 2. The common good and the global emergency; 3. Grace and the built environment; 4. Grace and place; 5. Grace, politics and planning; 6. Grace and public space; 7. Settlements in grace; 8. Feeding the city; 9. Connecting the city; 10. Housing by people; 11. The virtues of architecture; 12. Conclusion; Bibliography.

T. J. Gorringe is Professor of Theological Studies at the University of Exeter. A Theology of the Built Environment (2002), his previous book with Cambridge University Press, was the first to reflect theologically on the built environment as a whole. He is also the author of God's Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation (Cambridge University Press, 1996).