The Great American City Upon a Hill Is Always Under Construction

AMERICA'S UTOPIAN DREAMS LEAD TO URBAN EXPERIMENTATION.

- M. NOLAN GRAY

BY ANY REASONABLE criteria, Ave Maria should not exist. An hour inland from Naples and Fort Myers, the closest major cities, the Florida town sits alone amid a harsh landscape of fallow ranches and industrial citrus farms. Nearly the entire development, except downtown, is a flood zone. In May, the daily high creeps above 90 degrees Fahrenheit and does not come back down until October. The only major employer, assuming residents of $750,000 homes are not picking oranges, is Ave Maria University.

The city was willed into existence by Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza. After selling his stake in the chain for $1 billion, Monaghan—a devout Catholic and collector of Frank Lloyd Wright memorabilia—set out to design an idyllic Catholic town, a community free of “premarital sex, contraceptives and pornography.” After an opening stint in Michigan, the university reopened in Florida in 2007; today, over 6,000 residents call the place home. More are on the way: Last year, Collier County signed off on a thousand-acre expansion of the city.

Maybe Ave Maria sounds like a nightmare, a prison of patriarchy and conformity. Or maybe it sounds like a dream, a safe space for family and communion, far from the modern Sodom of Miami. Whichever way you fall, you should be happy that towns like Ave Maria exist. Cities like this could not be built in most other developed countries—or many other states, for that matter. Ave Maria is yet another entry into a homegrown American tradition of endlessly trying, and often failing, to break away and build a voluntary utopia.

WHAT DO YOU do when you disagree with the broader community? As the economist Albert O. Hirschman argued, you have two options. One is to stick around and exercise “voice,” making your case for why things should be different, organizing your compatriots, writing op-eds and running ads, getting your slate of candidates elected. If you succeed, you can test your new vision on your neighbors.