If you live in the suburbs, you’re probably used to hopping in your car to run pretty much every errand, even if you just need to get cold medicine at the drug store.

Have you ever wondered why this is part of your daily life at all? Or why you can’t walk more places? It’s easy to just assume that’s just the way things are, have always been and will always be. But the built environment of our suburbs is the result of decades of choices. And looking at how we use land in our local communities and trying to grow things like public transit are central ways to work on a whole collection of social justice issues. Usually when we make a list of social justice issues that people of faith care about, land use policies like zoning regulations aren’t on the top of the list. But maybe they should be.

Today’s guest writes on these issues in such compelling and unexpected ways. Addison Del Mastro runs his own Substack newsletter on urbanism and cultural history called The Deleted Scenes, and he also contributes to places like Vox and The Bulwark and America Magazine. A Catholic who describes himself as a bit right-of-center politically, Addison crosses boundaries between groups that are often uncrossed in today’s polarized America. He’s a thinker you want to know. Read his writing or listen to him during this conversation with host Mike Jordan Laskey and you might start to see why words and phrases like zoning regulations, land use and parking minimums are important things for all of us to be thinking and advocating about.

Addison Del Mastro’s newsletter: https://thedeletedscenes.substack.com/

His writing at America: https://www.americamagazine.org/voices/addison-del-mastro

“NIMBYISM is a Distorted Love”: https://www.thebulwark.com/nimbyism-is-a-distorted-love/

AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.