Monai aims to nurture common care about land, planning, design and amenities, especially in England, by:

• Exploring powerful systems that operate remotely from citizens.
• Promoting development that respects the dignity of human relationships, revealed in the conditions of settlements: for housing, towns and regions, and pipelines of various kinds that connect them.

Many people’s experiences speak of real and perceived exclusion from powers and responsibilities for creating places they can and want to abide in. Faith challenges everyone to search to the foundation of freedoms and choices that are political and legal, professionally informed, and resolved in communities and households. It is concerned about community welfare building, at heart how to create places that design everyone into their fabric, and the terms for indefinite residence. The ways each person holds and uses land and materials directly affect the dignity of every person and the common good of the settlement, for people with all kinds of wealth, education, physical and mental function, and other characteristics. 

The distinct contribution of Monai is to increase Catholic engagement with the struggle for just land and planning systems in England. Throughout Church history, Catholics have been part of this struggle in every part of society; they have no universal planning model to offer, but only the signs of life.

Home is where one starts from.

T. S. Eliot, East Coker, No. 2 of Four Quartets, published in the 1940 Easter edition of New English Weekly. Listen to extracts read by Jeremy Irons: external link.

Follow Monai on Twitter @abidingplaces

Picture: Modern development of tenure-blind retirement flats, arranged round a professionally-maintained communal garden.