Urban centres across North America are currently experiencing rapid growth accompanied by exciting revitalization projects. However, even as cities experience these positive developments, our cities also display expressions of need. The mushrooming growth of New Canadian communities within the mosaic of the city has only further accented and diversified the complexity of need. In spite of incredible development less and less positive or productive dialogue is taking place. Loneliness, hopelessness and despair are painted on the faces of a troubling proportion of the population. Are these really the indicators of where our urban society is moving? Gentrification, while key to revitalizing economically depressed areas of cities, often comes with the side-affect of displacing affordable residences which house poorer members of the community. One of the greatest challenges emerging in our cities is the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Strategic and sophisticated city planning which enables these diverse populations to coexist in an atmosphere of respect and mutual support are critical to a healthy urban future. Religious institutions—particularly the Salvation Army—have a role to play in helping city planners achieve this harmony. In order to appreciate the position being presented here, it will help to understand who and what the Salvation Army is. I can speak most knowledgeably from my own background as a member and an employee of the Salvation Army. While I am not writing as an apologist for The Salvation Army, this article is written through the eyes of a Salvationist who seeks to express and to address the needs of the urban community.The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 by William Booth, an ordained Methodist minister. Aided by his wife, Catherine, Booth formed a group dedicated to reaching the people living in the midst of appalling poverty in London's East End. Booth worked among the thieves, prostitutes and drunkards. To congregations that were desperately poor, he preached hope and salvation. From its start in London's East End, the Salvation Army movement expanded rapidly and is now active in virtually every corner of the world. The basic social services developed by William Booth have remained an outward visible expression of the Army's strong religious principles. New programs that address contemporary needs have been established. Among these are disaster relief services, day care centres, summer camps, holiday assistance programs for the aging, AIDS education and residential services, medical facilities, shelters for battered women and children, family and career counseling, vocational counseling, correctional services, and substance abuse rehabilitation to name but some of the ministries. In all of this social services work, however, the Salvation Army does primarily remain a church—"Christianity with its sleeves rolled up" to quote Vachel Lindsay. Given its beginnings and ongoing work, The Salvation Army is very much an urban creature. For more than 120 years, the Salvation Army has established its place in the fabric of the urban community.Having traced the history of the Salvation Army, I now turn to how it can help develop strategic policies for healthy urban societies. When we use the term, "urban society", what defines the community upon which we are focusing? In Canada, we can no longer assume that "urban society" is the conglomerate of street people and slum dwellers in which substance abusers, petty criminals, and the poverty-stricken. The mix has become far more complex. If it ever was possible to name a few programs and services that would enable the traditional urban dweller to survive, it certainly is no longer the case. Competing for space and an opportunity to establish their chosen life-style now are former suburbanites and new Canadians from all over the world. These new urbanites bring with them many attributes and attitudes that make them foreigners to the prevailing culture of the original residents—in most cases, they have a sense of direction; they dress and eat well; and they have jobs which allow them to enjoy the benefits of city life through going to theatres and the sports events. This latter attribute is generally taken for granted by the new urbanites. What's more, if they lose their job or, more often, leave a position, they have the expectation that they will find a new position very quickly due to their level of training and marketable skills. This is not the case for the former population. Their prospects for finding new, meaningful employment, unlike their new neighbours, are bleak indeed. Dion Oxford, director of The Salvation Army's Gateway hostel in downtown Toronto, describes the situation this way: I call it the modern-day famine. In the Bible, famine is usually related to agriculture when labour bears no fruit for so long that the work finally stops and all hope is lost. In the urban famine, it is working one low-paying job after another, without promotion, and then getting laid off because of someone's bottom line not being met.It's entering the cycle and having it happen again and again and again. It ends with all hope being lost. It ends with being afraid to even go to a job interview to avoid the terror of facing yet another rejection.That's the urban famine. It's okay to focus on providing housing for the homeless, but it will not work unless employment is brought into play. I look upon housing and employment as being the same as two tracks to a train. You need both or you derail. In order to pull together the factors I have laid out in terms of the Salvation Army's work and the need to rethink our cities policies, I will refer to the work of Abraham Maslow and his signature work on The Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow noticed early in his career as a psychologist that some human needs take precedence over others and, until those needs are met, people do not pay much heed to the others. Dr. George C. Boeree of Pennsylvania's Shippenburg University describes how Maslow laid out five broad layers of human needs which I have paraphrased in the next two paragraphs. The most basic layer consisted of physiological needs such as oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar and calcium, the maintenance of a body temperature of 370C, sleep, avoidance of pain and other survival conditions. When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, the second layer, the safety and security needs, come into play. This raises the awareness of the need for safe circumstances, stability and protection and concern for fears and anxieties rather than the food and water needs that were prevalent initially. Once the physiological needs and safety needs are largely addressed, the love and belonging needs begin to emerge. The individual begins to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, affectionate relationships in general and a sense of community. Dr. Boeree observes that the individual becomes "increasingly susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties". The fourth level encompasses the esteem needs. At the lower level, Maslow noted the need for the respect for others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity and even dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence and freedom. Maslow calls all four levels deficit needs. If you don't have enough of something, you have a deficit and feel the need. He sees all these needs as essentially survival needs. The levels correspond to our developmental phases from the time we are born. Under stressful conditions, or when survival is threatened, we can "regress" to a lower need level. For example, if your family ups and leaves you, it seems that love is again all you ever wanted.The last level is a bit different. Maslow used a variety of terms to refer to this level. He called it growth motivation, being needs (or B-needs in contrast to D-needs) and self-actualization. These needs involve the continuous desire to fulfill potentials, to "be all that you can be". They are a matter of becoming the most complete, the fullest, "you"—hence the term, self actualization. It follows then that, to be truly self-actualizing, a person's lower needs must be taken care of, at least to a considerable extent. If you are hungry, your are focused entirely on getting food; if you are unsafe, you have to be continuously on guard; if you are isolated and unloved, you have to satisfy that need; if you have a low sense of self-esteem, you have to be defensive or compensate. When lower needs are unmet, you can't fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials.Pre-dating Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by more than forty years, William Booth made it clear to his followers that "You can't preach to men about salvation when they have an empty stomach." Booth's approach to addressing the human condition was expressed in more tangible terms. Booth's "soup, soap and salvation" philosophy expressed his understanding that when lower needs are unmet, you can't fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials.Human needs exist amongst all echelons of the evolving diversity in the "renewal" of our urban centres. Tragedy befalls the rich and the poor; fatal accidents, serious and terminal illnesses, personal tragedies such as marriage break-ups and children making dangerous life-style choices are common to humanity as a whole. While D-needs such as nutrition and shelter may not be issues common to the new urbanites, sleep disorders and anxieties often are. Loneliness and a sense of betrayal beset all classes of humanity. As municipalities and church leaders wrestle with the challenges of creating viable plans for urban renewal, it is essential to find ways to meet not only the differences that divide the new and the old but to be mindful of the vital threads of common needs shared by all. When Canada was in its infancy, the genesis of large urban centres began mainly on a blank sheet. The first manifestations of European-style civil society began very humbly. As decades passed, larger and more urbanized populations gathered in what became Canada's major urban centres. The demand for services grew roughly along the same pattern as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The requirements for supplies of food and clothing and acceptable shelter were gradually met and a new focus on safety and security needs replaced them. The pattern extended further to meet the requirements for health and hospital care. In Canadian cities, churches were the initial agents to establish these institutions. This was also the case for educational facilities at all levels from primary children right through university level. Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist and the Salvation Army churches were just some of the groups that were active in setting up hospitals and schools. While contemporary religious institutions do not often establish hospitals, they still have the capacity to assess what is happening in the communities surrounding them, Some, although not all, have the skills to identify the classes of need that are emerging in the new urbanism. Those that do not can easily train personnel or partner with sister communities which have the skill sets to determine first steps in meeting those needs. In spite of the tight budgets within which most religious communities operate, they still tend to represent a cross-section of professionals, activists and people who, in general terms, want to make a difference and to help their community in tangible ways. The power and impact the intervention of religious communties—particularly the Salvation Army with its history, location, and philosophy—in the process of renewing an urban society or community can be immeasurably enhanced if the work is conducted in partnership with other religious communities, agencies and the local government. One of the keys to making a real difference can be found while making the initial assessment of community needs. That key is the match between the undertaking and the capacity, mission and commitment of individual communities. Working together as partners, the city and religious communities can develop the tools and expectations for a new and better urban centre.In conclusion, then, I will be bold and suggest some possible paths religious communities and city governments might consider in their quest to understand and respond to all the aspects assossiated with the urban renewal process. One approach is to identify a specific group within the urban community with which to work. The strategies may then range from language training, cultural acclimatization, advocacy, and preparing to enter the employment market. Another possible approach is to focus on creating links between the various constituent groups in the urban centre for the purpose of fostering greater understanding amongst them. The strategies here might include controlled town-hall meetings amongst leaders of the groups in which the goal is mutual support and appreciation for the needs and desires of each other. Still further approaches might include establishing community programs to meet the social and recreational needs of the community. Often religious communities have the largest, most available facility to which community groups may gain access. Within downtown areas, these are most often churches. By adopting an approach which affirmed community capacity development as the strategy of choice, the steps forward could be maintained and assured as the community and the church work toward the goal of just urban renewal. The avenues of partnership are countless but, in closing, the point must be made again that the key rests in ensuring there is a match between the real needs of the urban community and all of the factors already mentioned. Just as this will involve listening intuitively to urban group members, it also demands religious institutions to discern the needs of their community and the avenues they take in their work within the urban context—just as William Booth did in his establishment of the Salvation Army.