places of meeting

One hundred years ago, Abdu'l-Baha, then head of the Baha'i Faith, expressed a wish "that humanity might find a place of meeting."

A wish so deceptively simple, yet a glance in any direction, in any part of the world, proves that humanity is still in want of such a place. Boulevards and "ghettos" divide us geographically just as mindsets and social strata divide us both conceptually and in terms of the opportunities available to us. The places we construct reflect our choices about the world we want to live in, yet so few of us have a say in their design. And so we find ourselves clunkily adjusting to the ways of a world in which it is hard to imagine the emergence of this meeting place for all of humanity, where it's often hard to even get to really know our neighbours, where there are spaces that we avoid because we don't feel like we'd be welcome there, where fear and prejudice ostracise entire populations, and where we've come to learn to value our homes based solely on their financial worth rather than the role they could play in advancing the life of our communities.

We might start off thinking that the concept of place is straightforward. However, it's in thinking about the places that we as humanity inhabit that we can start to pose much larger questions about the way we choose to organise society and how this both reflects and shapes the nature of the relationships between us all. How does the way we use and conceive of a place shape the character of the life of a community? And their hopes and aspirations? Who should be the 'architects' of these places? By what means? Based on which principles? Using what kinds of approaches? What would be some of the characteristics of a place where all of humanity could meet as equals?

These questions are as much about urban planning as they are about the very social fabric of our world. And these are some of the questions that this blog will explore, drawing on principles from the Baha'i Faith about the oneness of humanity, on different thinkers on place and space, and on this blogger's experiences of community building in my neighbourhood.

For the realisation of the oneness of humanity in practice, not just in theory, requires a meeting point. Common understanding can only be reached if diverse people from all walks of life can come together, in a spirit of harmony, to share moments of their lives, and to exchange perspectives, in the hope of finding convergence, not conflict, among their different points of view, based on common aspirations for humanity's prosperity, and on those elements of our human nature that bind us all together.

We don't need to go out in search of these places. We can build them together, to make manifest the world that we wish for right here, in our living rooms, in our parks, in our local markets. Just what capacities, tools and materials we will need in order to do so will also form the substance of these reflections, and I hope to learn a lot from others who also want to try and build them.

Places live in our hearts as much as we live in them. That's not me being nostalgic, but rather a reflection on  how they really are a part of us. We can't exist without a place to exist in. So surely we must have some ideas about what we want those places to be like.