Ethical Redevelopment Principle #9: Platforms

Many cities, regardless of where they are located or the combination of factors contributing to their context, suffer the same challenges—disinvestment and neglect, population loss, abandoned buildings, and pockets of almost immutably bleak landscapes. Far too often, the "solutions" offered in the face of these issues is singular, an idea that exists in a vacuum.

No single building, individual, or program can reroute a neighborhood’s trajectory. Neighborhoods are successful when compound ideas exist with expanded relationships and networks of opportunity. In order to propel work forward, attract these variables by providing the community with a platform.

A platform serves as a foundation that creates new social possibilities, a real or symbolic structure that incubates new economic or artistic prospects. Platform-building means developing opportunities for people to gather and commune. These opportunities do not have to be flashy or expensive or excessively programmed. The event—what is happening—is beside the point. The point is that folks are meeting, exchanging, and learning.

Creating a platform is to create intentional hang time, which builds community through a space that encourages deep conversation, new friendships, and, ultimately, a community of people who want to be a part of transformative work in the neighborhood. A space where like-minded folk can come and say, “What else can be done? What can I do 10 blocks away from my block? How do I share what I love to do with others?”

Platforms in Action

Owned and operated by the indefatigable Eric Williams, The Silver Room n Hyde Park is a boutique retail store—and so, so much more:

“Located in the heart of Hyde Park, The Silver Room is much more than a storefront. The Silver Room is a gathering place, event space and artist gallery. The Silver Room represents community, culture and art.”

— The Silver Room, Chicago

The Silver Room, in addition to its retail offerings, is renowned for its annual Block Party, its long-running open mic "Grown Folks Stories," its gallery offerings, yoga classes, and the opportunities it provides for young, local artists to create, learn, and network.

“[The Silver Room] is a hybrid of retail, event space, art gallery, community gathering place. A lot of it is locally made. It uses local fashion, local art. It’s a gathering space with a social impact to it. ”

— Eric Williams, in CUSP Magazine

Ethical Redevelopment Principle #8: Constellations

Charismatic leaders are ineffective without teams. Both are strengthened by the presence of the other. Their complementary skills and practices can initiate exchange across specialty and advance the quality of the work. Ethical Redevelopment Principle #8 argues that projects benefit from a variety of roles among team members—visionaries, believers, implementers, collaborators, and evaluators—each exchanging unique expertise, forming a network or “constellation.”

A project taps into a particular kind of power when it refuses to be singular, when it takes up space and assembles believers from disparate corners. A vibrant constellation or a rich ecosystem is responsive to the pairings and groupings that suddenly emerge throughout the work process. Some webs of connectivity mature more slowly, gradually revealing formerly unforeseen affinities. Successful ecosystems cultivate organic exchange and foster collaboration throughout the work process.

CONSTELLATIONS IN ACTION

Hive Learning Network Chicago utilizes a constellations-based approach to expand youth-learning opportunities that leverage youth agency to develop digital and internet literacy skills. Hive Chicago forms an ecosystem of 85 youth-development focused member organizations, from museums and libraries to advocacy groups and tech start-ups. These organizations work together to make space for the Internet as a tool for learning within and beyond the classroom. See the Hive Chicago introduction video to learn more. 

““Connected learning is when someone is pursuing a personal interest with the support of peers, mentors and caring adults, and in ways that open up opportunities for them.” -Connected Learning Alliance ”

Hive Chicago member organizations motivate and inspire youth within an environment guided by the design values of connected learning. They provide close mentorship and offer hands-on making opportunities that act as platforms for learners from which to base and explore their ideas.

In addition to their work with youth, Hive Chicago mentors form a network designed to cultivate exchange across specialty. According to their website, they share expertise on how to maximize the “unique assets of their community, integrated digitally and face-to-face, to provide a learning ecology in which youth can discover their agency, pursue their passions, and learn.” The unique backgrounds and skill sets of mentors advance the quality of the work and form connections to resources beyond the constellation.

Over the last five years, the Hive Fund for Connected Learning has supported youth-curiosity-inspired projects such as the Community Telescope Ambassadors, Safe Passages for Teen Skaters and Bikers, ChiTeen Lit Fest, and Minecraft + Design Process + Civic Issues in the Built Environment. (See full list of projects.) The success of these programs is due in part to methods outlined in Ethical Redevelopment Principle #8, Constellations—to foster exchange among team members. Hive Chicago maximizes its connections between learners, mentors, and their respective networks to create a peer-learning community for innovation in education.

Have you participated in a constellation that advanced the work on a project? What unforeseen benefits emerged? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Ethical Redevelopment Principle #7: Stack, Leverage + Access

Successful interventions, whether a single project, location, or gesture, have impact and reverberation. Ethical Redevelopment Principle #7: Stack, Leverage + Access, asserts that excitement can lead to investment and that resource streams can come from diverse sources.

TURN INTEREST AND EXCITEMENT INTO INVESTMENT

An investment in yourself, in your ideas and projects, sends a signal to those watching your work that you value place and people over profits. It is critical to have skin in the game, to have something at stake, even if the investment is sweat equity. 

Ethical projects require belief and motivation, sometimes more than they require funding. Early, small successes demonstrate feasibility and can spur the next success or even the next project. Whether you work on a series of projects or just one, leverage the attention garnered by your idea to amplify it. Let the work attract more believers.

“Have a vision. Be demanding.”

— Colin Powell, 65th U.S. Secretary of State

STACK RESOURCES, LEVERAGE INTEREST + PROVIDE ACCESS POINTS

Over time, a project from your initial days of engagement and experimentation can mature. Something that you passionately believed in, but had little external backing for, can grow in scale and scope to become a sophisticated version that many stakeholders support and believe in. Demonstrating this type of capacity permits access to greater resources.

Establishing relationships with funders, gaining access to multiple spheres of influence, and incorporating expertise are crucial to the enduring success of your project. You may not have access to sufficient funding from one distinct source. However, you can stack and bundle resource streams from diverse sources to meet the price tags of your projects. 

STACK, LEVERAGE + ACCESS IN ACTION

The Chicago Arts + Industry Commons (CAIC) is a collaboration between the City of Chicago, artist Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation, and the University of Chicago’s Place Lab. The concept excited people with a new model for artist-led, neighborhood-based development for mindful city-building. It proposed using arts and culture as tools to revitalize. It attracted believers. 

The project leveraged this interest to garner financial support. CAIC acquired $10.25 million from four major foundations: JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as individual donors and philanthropic organizations. 

CAIC’s self-sustaining, cultural reinvestment model appealed to funders.  The project description explains, “CAIC employs an evolving cultural reinvestment model that uses the revitalization of sleepy assets as part of an engine that spurs new development and new capital, a portion of which is used to support the civic commons.” Funders are more likely to support a project when their contributions will catalyze ongoing economic change.
    
The project stacked and bundled resource streams from diverse sources to meet its initial price tag. This provided access to a level of funding that would be otherwise unavailable, resulting in a more impactful project. Finally, the inclusion of multiple funders offered more people access points to involve themselves with the project. A larger community could take ownership over the work and have a stake in its ongoing success.

Have you worked on a project that cultivated investment from excitement? Did you stack, leverage, or access resources? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Salon Session #1 - The Session in Review

On Wednesday, July 28, Place Lab hosted the opening Session of our year-long Ethical Redevelopment Salon. In this entry, Place Lab Building Strategies + Construction Manager, Mejay Gula, reports on the Session.

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PRELUDE

Rain didn’t deter pre-Salon tour participants from venturing through the fenced-in construction zones of St. Laurence Elementary School or a former ComEd Substation, nor did it stop the lunch and tour excursion to Inspiration Kitchens. These optional excursions are designed to expose Salon members to people, projects, and places that are engaged in inspirational, community-based, ethically-minded civic projects in Chicago.

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PART I

“The goal is to get into the weeds of practical ideas, questions, concerns, tips, and how-tos.”

— Theaster Gates

On a grey, muggy Thursday evening, 50 Ethical Redevelopment Salon members and invited guests packed an intimate and private gallery space at the Stony Island Arts Bank. It was the first of nine Salon Sessions and provided the first opportunity for members to be open, inspire, share, and commune among a diverse group of practitioners representing several cities across the country. 

The Session kicked off with a warm welcome from moderator Steve Edwards, and stage-setting commentary from Theaster Gates:

“Our hope is that today will be a day of starting to dig in. The first big Convening was a poetic introduction to the ideas around Ethical Redevelopment, nine ideas that are not meant to be turned into Biblical law, nor are they nine steps that will lead you to a perfect development. These were ideas to get the party started. The intentions for the Salon Sessions are to go in-depth to the nitty-gritty about some of the work you’ll see presented today and to engender conversation where you can bring all of your projects, perspectives, and experience to the table. The goal is to get into the weeds of practical ideas, questions, concerns, tips, and how-tos.”

The Session focused on Principal #1: Repurpose + Re-propose. Taking words from the Ethical Redevelopment booklet: This approach to city- or community-building is about resource availability and ingenuity—start with what you have and recognize existing local assets and latent value in the discarded and overlooked. Theaster advised to “not only start with what you have but look at what you have and scratch your head and ask what else it can be? What I think is often left off the table in development is how important vision is to the process. We want to start off by acknowledging the power and importance of vision in the re-proposing process.”

Salon members were assured that the Session was an environment of trust, where participants were encouraged to be open, honest, and released from their most scared and vulnerable moments and challenges. The hope is that this Salon experience can be taken back home to be used as a template to create new sets of values for the members’ local teams.

Place Lab’s Lead Design Manager, Nootan Bharani, and Bucky Willis of Bleeding Heart Design in Detroit, each presented on creative reclamation projects. The presentations summarized, for discussion by the group, the projects’ challenges. 

Nootan presented on the St. Laurence Elementary School redevelopment project in Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood. The school, once slated for demolition following its closure in 2002, is the focus of a creative reuse project that aims to make the property a hub of artistic, educational, and economic activity.

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Nootan Bharani presenting on the St. Laurence Elementary School project.

As Nootan described it, conventional methods of refurbishing dormant properties—methods that are profit-driven—are being set aside in favor of Conscientious Intervention, a people-driven approach for redevelopment that is implemented in all of Theaster’s building projects. Conscientious Intervention is based on vision, intuition, indeterminacy, and creative adaptations that are concerned with the greatest benefit for the community, not the pocketbook of the developer. Nootan cautioned that this approach to reimagining a building’s use often takes the path of most resistance.  

Nootan discussed some of the complexities of Repurposing + Re-proposing: the initial building acquisition, the headaches of as-built conditions and structural failures, concerns about vagrancy and illegal dumping, the obstacles that accompany remediation, and rigid zoning laws. All of these roadblocks, Nootan explained, are simply part of “allowing one thing to become another.”

The zoning ordinance governing St. Laurence favors certain uses and densities of specific areas. Those uses and densities, she stressed, were established in a by-gone time and environment; the factors that shaped the initial zoning ordinance are no longer applicable to the area as it exists today.

“It just doesn’t, by right, allow for the uses we envision,” Nootan said. 

Theaster’s project team, led by Nootan, is going through an uncharted process with the City of Chicago to find a solution to the zoning problem. The outcome of this process could establish St. Laurence as a model for how old ordinances can be made to accommodate modern redevelopment. 

During the discussion that followed, Theaster offered great insight into what I have found can be a significant hurdle for small, grassroots organizations and creative entrepreneurs: understanding the law. A city’s zoning laws can read like a foreign language to the uninitiated. Developers with sufficient capital often move their projects forward with the aid of lawyers to translate and, if necessary, make the case for why the developer’s project should not be held to the ordinance. But the types of projects that Salon members and Place Lab are tackling simply do not have that type of capital, and making things happen requires a bit of creativity.

 “There’s a sliding scale of feasibility, changing code, access to lawyers—the amount of money—and you have to put these things into a calculus,” Nootan continued. “If you don’t have the money, it will take you a little longer unless you get advocates in the city to believe in the new thing that you want to do. You might need to read into the zoning of your city, bringing to attention something the city council wasn’t aware of and find someone there that can help you.”

Confronting the list of impediments to a redevelopment effort can be discouragingly overwhelming, and too often leads to incomplete or failed projects. I sensed that some of our Salon members were struggling under these restraints within their own projects. Nootan concluded her presentation by sharing a handful of examples of ways Theaster’s team has transgressed these issues and left the Salon Members with these questions:

Do you have an answer to this? Can you share your insight, experiences, lessons learned? Please share on the Ethical Redevelopment forum.

Bucky Willis followed Nootan’s presentation with a case study of her current project, led by her new public interest design movement, Bleeding Heart Design (b.h.d.). Based in Detroit, b.h.d. advocates the use of human-centered design to inspire people to become more altruistic by using public art, design, and architecture as conduits for social change. Bucky’s career and research lies at the intersection of architecture/design and social issues/emotional impact. She walked us through b.h.d.’s Skyscape Project, which aims to transform a dilapidated, commercial building into a roofless indoor/outdoor community space in the Lindale Gardens Community of Northeast Detroit.

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Bucky Willis presenting b.h.d.'s Skyscape Project.

b.h.d. approaches design concepts by first asking themselves: How does this project inspire altruism, generate generosity and more love for people? Bucky shared a graph that represented Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s plan to increase the amount of demolitions happening in the city, amounting to over 40,000 demos within the next two years alone. Bucky expressed sadness at the loss of stories and history embedded within these buildings, and at how disjointed communities will be after all of the demolitions. The Skyscape Project aims to inspire neighbors to fight for these structures and for community members to take ownership of what happens in, and to, their neighborhood.   

Some challenges in the Skyscape Project include: having a modest and inflexible budget; fixed deadlines associated with grant resources; implementing a sustainable management plan for the space; acquisition of the building (beginning with finding ownership information); and, as b.h.d. was working with a dilapidated building, reducing the high construction costs. 

With all of these challenges in mind, Bucky pondered, “Can this be a barn raising—but without the barn?” From that emerged the creative idea for a roofless outdoor space to host events and programming.

The Salon participants took about 20 minutes to cultivate follow-up inquiry to both presentations, coming up with several questions around community engagement, public policy, project sustainability, interest sustainability, the realities of being outside expertise entering a community and gaining trust, race and administration, building and demonstrating capacity, and gaining credibility: 

• Is there a way that cities can more clearly communicate ownership of vacant buildings? How much do we have to do things in a transparent and mission- and goal-oriented way? Is there a double standard in how community development projects have to be conducted versus how other developers get things done?
   
• What does community participation look like in a project like Skyscape? What do we mean when we say ‘community engagement’? Does it mean direct engagement, community approval, co-creation? When working with community engagement, what value(s) are you presenting and offering to community and partners? What levels of community participation that are available to people? When do you engage the community in the process, planning, and vision if the regulatory processes, like zoning or acquisition, are not yet secured?
   
• When working with a community that doesn’t understand the regulatory process, how do you tactfully leverage neighborhood expertise while also employing outside expertise in a way that feels co-equal or complimentary? Theaster observed the need to consider Race and Administration—if ‘expertise’ seems to live in Whiteville and ‘problems’ appear to live in Brown/Blackville, then how do you create equity and camaraderie and friendship? Is there a scalable way of addressing these various regulatory projects?
   
• How many people does it take to sustain activity in this space during the planning process, construction, and after it has opened? How do you keep people engaged so that they feel heard and inspired when projects have regulatory delays or lengthy completion timelines? How long do you continue to engage and encourage property owners to participate in activities for their blighted building? How long do you dig in, when do you stop playing nice, and when do you decide to move on?
   
• How do you negotiate and create balance between action and gaining reaction? Building capacity, demonstrating capacity. How much energy do you put into both fields so that you build credibility and ability? Is there a better way to use funds that can build capacity? How do you determine the highs and best purpose for vision? 
   
• To build a movement around Ethical Redevelopment and strengthen the message, can this group actually reach a consensus around a number of Principles?

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PART II

The Salon’s respondent was Dan Peterman, an artist, educator, and co-founder of Chicago’s Experimental Station and Blackstone Bicycle Works. Dan used the three-decades-old Experimental Station as a framing device for his response. He explained:
“The project has undergone several stages of occupying the building bit-by-bit, slowly acquiring the building, to later having a part of it burn down, then building on top of it, building different organizations within the structure, and growing a not-for-profit that has a very different administrative set of tasks that it deals with now than when it was a more flexible artist-driven project at its start. I prefer to program a building in a way that doesn’t over-define itself. The programs can speak for what was happening in the building. The programs can develop its audience organically.” 

Dan is a strong advocate in artist equity and supporting creative stakeholders to allow things to grow and evolve over time, and believes that stringent goals can limit a project from developing in an intrinsic fashion. Developing a mission statement early on was a bad idea! He also believes that it can be very confusing for a project to be so open, trying to answer all of a community’s needs.

Dan suggests to instead communicate more clearly by landing on a concept and saying, “I want to do this, because I don’t think there’s anything like this in the neighborhood,”—to stick with your intention while still being adaptive to feedback and trials. Even if a program is small in scope, capturing a small part of the community, it is still a start. 

Dan’s discussion raised a lot of questions around community engagement. One member asked: “What is the balance when a developer comes into a community and says this is what you are going to get versus asking what is it that you want?” 

It seems that it takes a certain level of creative confidence and sense of agency to overcome being an “outsider.” Theaster responded: “Something has to be birthed and someone has to birth it. The difference is that a developer has an obligation to set up a town hall meeting because they are getting public money and need to provide a community benefit agreement of some sort. People with vision usually aren’t benefiting from the same kind of cash that would flow toward these projects. We’re adopting capitalist developer pursuits on money that is already public money for things that are our own personal vision.”

So, What does community engagement look like? What value are you pitching and offering to a community and partners and what are the levels of community participation that are available to people? A Salon member answered: “There’s a way of reaching a middle ground here to provide agency and a sense of ownership to people that are already in the neighborhood who have that creative vision, whether its through the team you’re bringing on or the events that you host. It creates a balance.”

Speaking to the deep willingness members need in order to understand the existing field of development if they wish to accomplish anything significant, Theaster ended the Session with a proposition to its members: “The world of Place is bigger than our building… The proposition that we make can be big but it also means that the criticality that we have around understanding the field has to also be big.”

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PART III

With that proposal, Theaster transitioned the Repurpose + Re-propose Session to "hang time," a free block for members to socialize while enjoying a musical performance. He walked to the windows of the Salon, brought up the blinds, and revealed a group of musicians plucking and percussing their instruments, serenading members from the lower roof of the Stony Island Arts Bank.

Interdisciplinary artist Mikel Patrick Avery and his band provided this artistic moment for the Salon. One of the underlying philosophies of Ethical Redevelopment is that artists of all kinds have something significant to contribute, need to be part of the conversation, and provide space for the often-neglected right side of the brain in discussions about city-building.

While the musicians played, members ate, drank, met each other, and began conversations that will continue for the coming year. Artistic moments and hang time have been built into each of the Salons Sessions. The ninth Principle—Platforms—includes this idea: “The event—what is happening—is beside the point. The point is that folks are meeting, exchanging, and learning. Create intentional hang time. It builds bonds, which build community.”

In order to track the development of these bonds and capture what is discussed during the Salons, we asked Arthur Wright to draw what he hears and illustrate the concepts, words, and emotions that emerge. Diligently sketching in the background, Arthur visually unfolds the discussion over the course of each Salon as a different kind of reference point for the evenings. Arthur is local artist, participated in the first Fellowship Program at the Stony Island Arts Bank, and talked about Principle #6: Place Over Time at the Public Convening in June 2016. More of his work can be found here.

The next Salon Session will be held in September. We'll see you soon.

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Bring you voice to the conversation—share your thoughts on the forum.

Ethical Redevelopment Principle #6: Place Over Time

“Rome was not built in a day." Great things take time to create. Ethical Redevelopment Principle #6, Place Over Time, asserts that place is a function of time—a sense of place grows and matures the more time people spend engaging in and within a space. 

(PEOPLE + ACTIVITY + AFFINITY) x TIME = PLACE

Place is not just a geographical location. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan illuminates in Space and Place, a space only achieves definition when it is given meaning—positive or negative—by people. Meaning emerges from the feeling or perception held by people about the place, and not from aspects inherent to the place itself. By living/working/doing things in a place, participants form attachments and relationships, and a sense of belonging is created—an identity coalesces.

Making a place cannot happen quickly. The element of time is crucial. Time permits intentions to be realized, and visions to become realities. With the participation of myriad neighbors, partners, stakeholders, and curious participants, a place becomes imbued with culture, soul, life, identity. This is an organic process. The identity of a place is not fixed; as needs of the people change, the place must adapt. The evolution of place can take years, and is entirely dependent on the affinities of people. Approach with patience the notion of place, or there may never be a there there.

“Creating great places isn’t a linear activity. Sustaining them is even trickier.”

— Daniel Gilmartin, Executive Director and CEO Michigan Municipal League in The Economics of Place

 
Place Over Time in Action

Hope Works is a Community Development Corporation (CDC) that “seeks to empower our neighbors to become active participants in and catalysts of a flourishing Woodlawn and South Side of Chicago community.” The CDC came out of a long, faith-based process, initiated by the opening of a satellite location in 2003 by the Portage Park-based Bethel Christian Church. The church, located at and in partnership with the University of Chicago, and lead by a white pastor from Tennessee, initially attracted mostly University students. Over time, Bethel attracted a more diverse congregation and in 2010 became the Living Hope Church. With a newly acquired building in Woodlawn sorely in need of renovation, Living Hope welcomed volunteers, offering food and shelter to anyone who lent a helping hand. After four years of hard work and direct community involvement, the Living Hope Church became a part of the fabric of its neighborhood.

In 2010, Hope Works CDC was established to facilitate and drive the growth of economic opportunities for Woodlawn families. The organization provides employment assistance, programs aimed at economic and cultural engagement, and works on issues of housing development. Hope Works recognizes that many systemic and personal barriers are faced by those who are under- or unemployed, and address these barriers through work on housing, transportation, and health care. From the website: “Ultimately, people are able to not only get jobs but keep them.” Over time, the church found its place and became a place itself, a resource for participants to increase their contribution to the larger Woodlawn community and find structure and self-sufficiency in their lives and those of their family members.
 

WHAT HAVE YOU INVESTED IN OVER TIME?

Have you been a part of a place, organization, or vision that you’ve seen grow, change, and become transformed by participation? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Ethical Redevelopment Principle #5: Design

Principle 5 in the Principles of Ethical Redevelopment, "Design" states that beauty both comes from and belongs in blighted spaces, and that designed space can enhance a neglected area and illustrate the reverence and care residents have for the space. Visit the Place Lab website for the full current description of this idea at placelab.uchicago.edu/ethical-redevelopment/

Design impacts a city as much as policy and governance do. Design dictates everything from the way your subway fare card looks and works to the layout of a city, which is designed by urban planners, often to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others. Good design and beauty are basic services that can be available to all neighborhoods, even the most disinvested and neglected. By valuing what others discard, creative people—including invested residents—can resurrect fallow spaces with poetic moments that make a place desireable. Design and aesthetics attract attention because they convey the care and pride present in a neighborhood, as well as the identity and character of the people who live there. Deciding the layout of a community garden plot, where and what a mural artist paints, and what your frontyard or apartment window looks like contribute to the design and aesthetics of a neighborhood.

Place Lab’s Isis Ferguson recently wrote in a FastCo article that more people need to be part of the design of cities and neighborhoods:

“Asking the typically untapped people — artists, misfits, outsiders, elders, immigrants, people of color, and women — what the most joyous, liberatory, and authentic spaces are for them is a good start at imagining more for public life and for creating places of greater possibility for all in the public realm.”

— Isis Ferguson, Associate Director of City and Community Strategy at Place Lab

With inclusive practices and thinking, design can offer multiple uses for public space, adapt to needs, and promote social equity in urban spaces.
 

DESIGN IN ACTION

American alleys are distinct from small thoroughfares in other parts of the world. While Europeans use them as pedestrian passageways and Japanese cities build small retail shops, the uses of alleys in the US are for behind-the-scenes activities like garbage collection, car storage, and loading docks. Alleys can take up a large amount of a city’s real estate—Chicago’s 13,000 alleys amass 3500 acres, among the largest in the country. The Atlantic's City Lab recently reported on re-imaginings and re-designs of alleyways in cities around the US—surprising and creative ways that benefit the city’s environmental ecosystem, the social and cultural lives of residents, and entrepreneurs and small businesses.

The Chicago Green Alley program covered the city’s alleys with permeable surfaces “that redirect storm water into the ground and away from Chicago’s ‘overtaxed’ sewer system.” In Seattle, the International Sustainability Institute (ISI) took advantage of the city’s restructured trash collection, which removed dumpsters from alleys and now rely on trash bags. ISI has since programmed alleys with “projecting World Cup games from the back of a U-Haul truck, to cat adoptions, to revolving art installations.” In Los Angeles, the East Cahuenga Alley went from being known as “Heroin Alley” to a pedestrian walkway with outdoor dining and a Sunday artists’ market, and idea that has spread to other cities.

“The success of these projects shows how it’s possible to take a space that was once a liability, and turn it into a resource.”

— Daniel Freedman, Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative, in FastCo

WHAT CAN YOU DESIGN?

What design ideas do you have for your community? Share them in the comments below, and continue the conversation in the Ethical Redevelopment public forum.

Ethical Redevelopment Principle #4 - The Indeterminate

Contending with the unknown is part of the unorthodox thinking underlying Ethical Redevelopment. The Indeterminate, Principle #4, makes space for free-thinking and welcomes intuition and faith as guides. Traditional development projects and funding structures demand certainty, and seek to fully crystalize the end product before development begins. The Indeterminate takes its cue from the way many artists create work—observing the unfolding process, responding to the needs of the moment, and rerouting as necessary. Beginning with a vision and an open mind about the path forward may reveal moments you couldn’t have imagined.

“Humans believe themselves free of fear
when there is no longer anything unknown.”

— "Dialectic of Enlightenment," Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno

This unfettered method of making employed by artists is most evident in Dadaism, an art movement that embraced uncertainty, promoted collaboration, and championed chance. The horror and chaos of World War I gave rise to the Dada movement and its adherents, artists who raged against what they saw as the destructive intellectual rigidity of everyday society. Dada arts, literature, happenings, demonstrations, and philosophy spread a strong message against the carnage and cruelty that could result from inflexible rationalism. The Indeterminate echoes the sentiment that the pursuit of perfect knowledge, of certainty, is an enormous obstacle to redevelopment efforts.

“Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

— -Toni Morrison, from "Song of Solomon"

THE INDETERMINATE IN ACTION

Eventually becoming the largest community art project in the world, the AIDS Memorial Quilt began as an activist gesture in 1985 at the end of the annual march in San Francisco that commemorates slain city Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. On the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building, marchers taped cards bearing the names of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS, numbering over 1000 in that city alone. The display immediately resembled the patchwork style of a quilt and organizer Cleve Jones soon teamed up with friends to make 3-by-6-foot fabric panels to commemoration victims of the disease.

As word spread, panels arrived from across the country and, in 1987, the first showing of the quilt on the National Mall in Washington, DC covered a space larger than a football field. As the death toll increased, so did the quilt, which not only served as a memorial, but as a tool for awareness and understanding of the devastating impact of the disease, as a visual representation of the number of lives taken, and as a fundraiser for AIDS service organizations. In 1989, the Quilt was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, project chapters and affiliates exist across the globe, an archive collects the images and stories, and, in 2005, it won a “Save America’s Treasures” Federal Grant for conservation and sustainability planning.

WHAT'S YOUR PROJECT?

By asking his fellow marchers to write names on cards, Cleve Jones couldn’t have foreseen where this action would go. What idea do you have that feels like a beginning without an end? Try it out in the comments below.

Purpose-driven development: St. Laurence project

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Former St. Laurence Elementary School in Grand Crossing. Photo: Place Lab.

What spaces exist for people to get involved in the development processes occurring around them? Who has a say in choosing what buildings will be demolished and which are allowed to remain? What happens to a community when it loses a school, and what can we collectively imagine will happen inside these unique and valuable community assets?

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Inside the now abandoned St. Laurence. Photo: Place Lab.

Schools, and school buildings, are important loci of community, learning, and shared belief in the future. When school buildings and other community centers are closed, they are often simply abandoned, creating not only a visual eyesore, but a striking representation of public disinvestment and relegation of those communities. As Patrick Kerkstra observes in this Next City article on school closures: "...it’s not surprising that many shuttered schools are often simply left to rot for years by cash-stripped districts loathe to spend money on maintenance for empty buildings. It’s a state of affairs that can generate blight and, in time, pose genuine safety hazards." And it isn't just the building closure itself that impacts the neighborhood; the loss of a school sends myriad ripples throughout a community. The article goes on to note that "closing schools is almost always traumatic. Some consider the selection process arbitrary and open to political influence. And once the final decisions are made, students and families must scramble to find alternatives. Teachers are reassigned or laid off."

Because of their symbolic and practical importance to communities, renovating and re-activating these buildings presents unique opportunities for public conversation around the patterns of urban development, neglect, and reinvention, among local residents who are directly effected by these trends.

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Place Lab team members Carson Poole and Nootan Bharani working on site clean-up at St. Laurence. Photo: Place Lab.

Place Lab is currently working on a demonstration project called Board Up, a community engagement series that involves communities in reimagining the possibilities of disused spaces. The first Board Up involves the vacant St. Laurence Elementary School in Greater Grand Crossing, Chicago. Concepts for the future of St. Laurence may include makerspace that provides education and job training in industrial design and fabrication that will augment neighbors’ skills and expand employment prospects.

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The windows at St. Laurence prior to boarding. Photo: Place Lab.

This summer, young people in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood will engage with the reimagining of St. Laurence through artistic intervention, using the windows in the building as a canvas that will provide comment on the possibilities of St. Laurence. Drawing from the history of the community and the collections at the Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago artist Ruben Aguirre will lead a group of youth and explore pattern-making as a lens through which we can view culture and identity.  

The project will create murals for the boards that now cover the windows in the building, beginning the building’s transformation from abandoned to activated space. St. Laurence is rich with opportunities to tap into the latent capacity for change and artistry that exists among the community’s networks. These opportunities are what we call pedagogical moments, and can serve as a foundation on which a project is built. They are moments of exchange— simultaneous teaching and learning— that scale the impact of our work and move us forward. The third of our 9 Principles of Ethical Redevelopment, pedagogical moments are intentionally woven throughout the St. Laurence project and other Place Lab projects to maximize the scale and scope of impact

We'll provide updates this summer on progress at St. Laurence here on the SITE blog. Check back, and look out for an announcement for the public unveiling of the murals in August.

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Windows lining a hall at St. Laurence. Photo: Place Lab.

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Update: An earlier version of this blog entry referred to Place Lab's work at St. Laurence as redevelopment. The blog has been revised to clarify that Place Lab is involved in a community engagement project at the site.

Ethical Redevelopment: An Introduction

Ethical Redevelopment makes the case for mindful city-building. By utilizing cross-city networks and cross-sector innovation, Ethical Redevelopment encapsulates a philosophy by which to shift the value system from conventional, profit-driven development practices to conscientious interventions in the urban context. It is articulated by an emerging set of 9 Principles that were drawn from artist-led, neighborhood-based development work on Chicago's South Side. Place Lab, part of the University of Chicago's Arts + Public Life initiative, is introducing the 9 Principles in their early stages of development in order to share and refine with other willing urban practitioners who believe in spatial equity for cities. On Wednesday, June 22, 2016, Place Lab will host a free and open public Convening about Ethical Redevelopment. To learn more, visit: placelab.uchicago.edu/public-convenings/

Place Lab is preparing to publicly present their ongoing investigation and demonstration of projects that make the case for mindful city-building. Through a series of Public Convenings + Salon Sessions, Place Lab will share the 9 Principles of Ethical Redevelopment. Through the social learning network developed at the Salon Sessions, Place Lab and selected practitioners will workshop projects from around the country to share ideas, explore paths to overcoming obstacles, and consider methods of implementation.

Rooted in artist-led, neighborhood-based development work actively occurring on Chicago’s South Side, these evolving Principles emerged from the work of artist and urban planner Theaster Gates, Jr. In the video above, Gates discusses some of the assumptions underlying Ethical Redevelopment. 

UNDERSTANDING ETHICAL REDEVELOPMENT
The 9 Principles encapsulate a methodology that support the creation and sustainability of successful communities. Rather than calling Ethical Redevelopment new or innovative, it’s more accurate to consider Ethical Redevelopment as an atypical process for transformation that speaks to, and builds on, ideas and work already being done in communities. A people-focused approach to development is simply not as widely practiced as traditional forms of neighborhood development which prioritize profit over community — the type of development that spurs gentrification.

“Gentrification is a standing word for lots of other things that people really mean. When people in poor black communities use the word gentrification, they’re asking specific questions. If something good happens here, will I be forced out? Can I still afford to live here? Will the social constructs that governed how I lived here change?"— Theaster Gates, interview with the Chicago Tribune

Values, process, and aim are what distinguish Ethical Redevelopment from gentrification: robust public life requires a belief in and devotion to place in advance of investment. While there is no single solution to the myriad challenges cities face, Ethical Redevelopment provides a framework for creative revitalization of communities.

As we approach our first Public Convening for Ethical Redevelopment (June 22, 2016), we will be highlighting each of the 9 Principles with short videos, placing each Principle in context through one of our real-world projects, and encouraging you to engage with us by asking questions, sharing your thoughts, and considering how you can leverage these concepts to make an impact on your communities.

YOUR TURN — LET'S HEAR FROM YOU
As Gates observes, Ethical Redevelopment is a work in progress. We need your input to shape the conversation. Are there assumptions you feel we forgot? How can development occur without displacement? Tell us what you think in the comments section.

Don't forget to RSVP for the Public Convening for Ethical Redevelopment.