Wolf Road and the Kingdom of Heaven
July 16, 2026

Image: "The Kingdom of Heaven Is Right in Front of Us, No Matter How Bad Things Look" is a digital picture showing an embankment, in deep shadow, rising to a highway ramp, above which blue sky, with bright, fluffy clouds, is framed on one side by a portion of the Corning Tower, a state government office building in Albany, New York, USA. The tip of one spire of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception can be seen midway between stanchions supporting a highway guardrail. The picture was taken May 10, 2025, by James Lyons Walsh.

One of the horrors of suburban sprawl is Wolf Road, in Colonie, New York, USA, just outside the city of Albany. Walking feels dangerous, and for most of its length, Wolf Road has infrequent public transportation. Important facilities are held hostage by low-rise development and ample free parking, which spread desirable destinations out, leaving car ownership as the easiest ransom to pay.

Nevertheless, I understand the appreciation expressed for Wolf Road by Chris Churchill, the Times Union columnist and, much of the time, passionate advocate for walkable neighborhoods (Churchill: Maybe Wolf Road isn’t so terrible after all). I went car-free several years ago, but when I last moved, I seriously considered living near the southwest end of Wolf Road, an area with good transit links to both Albany and Schenectady, with retail density in the Colonie Center mall, and with restaurants and supermarkets accessible on foot to spry and courageous pedestrians.

In fact, the corridor centered on Wolf Road would make a wonderful city if the parking lots were filled in with buildings, except at the far ends of the road, where centralized parking could be provided; a streetcar line were put in; automobile use were discouraged on Wolf Road itself, except for vehicles carrying people with mobility impairments; buildings were accessible from the sidewalk, instead of placed, like lost arks, at the far end of perilous treks, in this case across busy parking lots; and low-rise construction gave-way to mixed-use, medium-rise buildings. In other words, Wolf Road could provide a wonderful life if it were made into what Albany, and cities in general, used to be, at least with respect to buildings and transportation infrastructure.

And that might happen. Land use is in a state of flux, and families are waking up to just how much money they spend to own multiple cars. The climate crisis hasn’t gone away, and the Iran War has reminded us that fuel shocks happen. Life could be much better if we overthrew carcentricity.

Wolf Road real estate has a personal connection to my childhood. I grew up among real estate and construction scions at a local Catholic-themed, independent, private school for boys who were privileged in one way or another. My family was privileged in one of the other ways, not possessing the kind of nascent baronial wealth that sprang up through the suburbanization of the United States and that stands to profit handsomely yet again, as changing land-use practices create another gold rush for real estate and construction interests.

I oppose baronial wealth, which distorts society, victimizing everyone, including those who possess it. The barons may know well the disadvantages of their advantages and perhaps justify their privilege as a burden they must bear, to make our lives possible through responsible stewardship of the resources they don’t conspicuously consume. I would liberate them from their burden by helping to usher in an economic system based philosophically on the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus seemed to be saying is not a far-off land, but rather a society in which people share freely, deriving their security not from treasure houses but from the good will their generosity engenders.

I don’t think we need to avenge ourselves on the filthy rich descendants of the barons who saddled us with carcentricity and suburban sprawl. Suburbanization was partly an adaptation to the threat of aerial bombardment of cities (The Urbanist Podcast: How the Cold War Suburbanized America » The Urbanist). Spreading out was a reasonable defense to attempt, though by the end of 1983, we knew that nuclear winter would end civilization following full-scale nuclear war, regardless of how many people and how much infrastructure survived.

Yes, suburbanization involved a racist money-grab. Still, complex systems science shows that segregation can emerge from the mere desire to live where one sees at least 50% of one’s neighbors as being like oneself (https://youtu.be/R4f1NM_a6VU?t=35). We're still waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven today, and not all the original barons were evil. I hold nothing against their descendants, today’s barons, that redistribution of baronial wealth via tax policy and reparations wouldn’t straighten out.

In short, if the big money has plans for Wolf Road, it may be about time. Let’s just use our political power to guide the process to a better destination than suburbanization produced.