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In London this week it feels like anyone who’s anyone is running for mayor. The London mayoral elections don’t take place until 2016, but already 20 candidates, including the former England football captain Sol Campbell, have thrown their hats into the ring. Over the coming months these candidates will be talking about what makes a good city and how we live together well. So will those in the “northern powerhouse” cities as they stand to receive more control through the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill. 80% of us Britons now live in urban areas. We are becoming city creatures, but our hearts and our imaginations have yet to catch up.This might be because the British soul is deeply coloured by the romantic movement, by Ruskin and Coleridge and Blake who saw urbanisation and industrialisation as a blight on the landscape, as somehow in opposition to our true selves. When people are asked to conjure up a visual image of peace it is nearly always a rural vision devoid of people. Even the most famous poem in praise of the beauty of cities, Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” is set really early in the morning when “all that mighty heart is lying still”. I think in 2015 Wordsworth would struggle to find a time when all the inhabitants of London were asleep and he could therefore see it “ Silent, Bare”. And there’s the crux. Cities are humanity, concentrated. They are the opposite of silent and bare. Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser defined them as the absence of physical space between people. I’ll be honest, most of the time that doesn't feel like a very positive thing. It's not just French existentialists who think hell is other people, but everyone stuck in a traffic jam or crammed onto the northern line right now. This is why it challenges me that Christianity is surprisingly positive about cities. The story of the bible begins in a garden, but it will finish in a city. Christians believe that the direction of travel for a redeemed human race is living closer together, not further apart. Because humans are interdependent not independent, we can't avoid the hard work of living together well. This is behind a recent shift in theological emphasis, with a growing number of churches now teaching that Christians should, where possible, commit to cities for the long term, contributing to the culture and seeking the flourishing of all. Delighting in the city’s diversity, creativity and energy, and most of all, challenging as it is at times, in its people.