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In the late 1990s, a property developer began designing Highpoint Community in Romeoville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His plans consisted of apartments and single-family housing oriented around a central village green featuring a community center. And in that community center he envisioned an anchoring presence that is seldom considered by commercial and residential real estate developers: a church.

Initially, the developer approached the leaders of his home church, Community Christian Church, an 800-member congregation in nearby Naperville. He asked them to consider moving their church to Highpoint. They said no.

Instead, Community Christian's leaders decided to launch a second campus in Highpoint and rent space in the community center, which included a basketball court, classrooms, and a café. A few years later, the church built its own facility: the 12,000-square-foot Children and Arts Center. Staffed by church personnel and funded completely by Community Christian, the Children and Arts Center provides a full schedule of after-school arts and education for children in Highpoint throughout the week.

Scott Knollenberg, campus pastor of Community Christian in Highpoint, says the location at the center of the community perfectly serves the church's mission of "helping people find their way back to God." In particular, the congregation feels called to reach out to the nearly 300 single mothers within a half-mile of the church, along with their children and teenagers.

With its facilities at the center of the Highpoint Community and open for public use during the week, Community Christian exemplifies one application of an architectural school of thought known as "new urbanism." New urbanism emerged during the 1980s as an urban development movement. Today developers are adapting the principles of new urban design for use in the suburbs (sometimes called "new suburbanism").

And in both the urban and suburban manifestations, churches are finding some of the elements of the design philosophy an excellent means of advancing their ministry mission.

The term "new urbanism" encompasses a range of design commitments. At its simplest, the philosophy is characterized by a commitment to creating community through architecture and neighborhood development. It is an effort to move away from functional land-use zoning, in which retail, commercial, and residential areas are all given dedicated space. This type of city planning is used primarily to cater to the automobile. New urbanism, as urban designer Mel McGowan of Visioneering Studios describes it, is committed to "getting back to human-scale place making." Zoning for multiple uses is as old as the earliest human civilization. "The only thing that's 'new' about [new urbanism] is learning how to respond to the technology of the internal combustion engine," he says.

New urban developments, then, share a list of common characteristics. Because they are meant to reinforce community, the developments have a discernible center. Many new urban efforts include a range of housing options, from apartments and townhomes to single-family residences and from luxury to affordable. These houses usually are built within a quarter mile (a five-minute walk) of the community center. Land is zoned for a diversity of uses, so that housing, entertainment, and the residents' normal weekly needs are all available within walking distance of a central community hub.

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