While communes and collective living typologies offer meaningful forms of agency to residents, they have struggled to scale up as a widespread model for living. This is partly due to the inherent agency that these domestic types foster that is tied to a more intimate scale of decision making. American Communes have also been criticized for their enclave-nature: often self-selecting a more homogeneous group of residents to ease day-to-day tensions involved in sharing. Our proposal attempts to address these two issues by decentering the commune into a series of buildings, landscapes, and activities that occupy the myriad of vacant lots in Bronzeville. This would entail separating the programs of the co-living house into a series of structures and spaces that are locally tailored to individual sites. As a network of buildings, this would enable additional scales of sharing resources amongst residents as well as with the neighbourhood proper. Further, it would erode the enclave nature of the commune and integrate it into the neighbourhood, making visible the systems of care and showcasing alternative forms of land tenure. This decentralized model of sharing could extend beyond the domestic commons to reconsider how an urban commons might function.

​​The urban commons is a relatively new notion and involves a shift in understanding the commons not simply as shared resources but also as a relational social framework. The expansion of the noun ‘common’ to the verb ‘commoning’ entails the active participation in the mechanisms of sharing, including the shaping of rules that sustain the commons and exploring the emancipating potentials of sharing.1 As such, commoning is a practice that is continually evolving, made and remade by the subjects involved in the commons. Through an ongoing process of working together, negotiating, and organizing, these practices produce what is to be named, valued, used, and symbolized in common. Ultimately, these practices create forms of social life—highlighting new forms of living, working, and being in common.2 Precisely for the empowerment offered by these acts, they are always under continual threat of enclosure by the forces of capitalism as they attempt to transform society’s common-wealth.

In the Bay area during the 1960s two parallel movements examined practices related to commoning that ranged from the informal to formal. The first is the well documented commune movement, whose rejection of commercialism and ideology of shared property and labor resulted in experimentation with alternative family structures while commoning and more equitably distributing resources within domestic space. Despite the hundreds of communes in the Bay Area at this time, by the mid 1970s many had disappeared. There are a series of reasons (and theories) of why they did not persist—from the challenges of living together, increased rental prices, to legal issues

A critical legacy of the Bay area communes movement was the rare but impactful initiatives that extended the forms of care from the domestic commons to the urban commons. The Diggers, a radical community-action group of activists, operated across a series of communal households and were thereby able to leverage a larger range of resources and support. The Diggers repurposed and redistributed society’s ‘leftovers’ into a series of free initiatives.

At the same time that many of the Diggers and Kaliflower’s initiatives were taking shape, the Black Panthers Party for Self Defense (later renamed the Black Panthers Party) was being established by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland. As a leading organization of the Black Power movement, the Party attempted to create alternative structures, institutions, and lifestyles that challenged the prevailing racism, sexism, classism, individuals, and materialism.

The Black Panther’s Party survival programs were both political and socioeconomic. Bobby Seale emphasized that the programs were not “reform programs” but rather “revolutionary, community, socialistic programs”, with an expanded vision of transforming capitalism to a more equitable socialist structure.

Not surprisingly, there was some cross pollination between these two urban commoning projects within the Bay Area. Panther leader David Hillard credits the Digger’s free grocery store service as a key inspiration for the Panther’s free breakfast program. In face, Emmet Grogan of the Diggers dropped off a first batch of food to the Panthers to aid in setting up the free breakfast program.

The term precariat is a neologism that combines the proletariat and precarity. It has been used to capture the material and psychological uncertainty felt by a class-in-the-making, which is a byproduct of neoliberal transformations in labor practices within advanced capitalism. Terms such as creative labor, network labor, service labor, affective labor, immaterial labor, etc. reveal the diverse practices of labor that have emerged through globalization and information technology. These labor practices have caused an increasingly large sector of the population to live in precarity—referring to, “all possible shapes of unsure, not guaranteed, flexible exploitation: from illegalised, seasonal and temporary employment to homework, flex- and temp-work to subcontractors, freelancers or so-called self-employed persons. But its reference also extends beyond the world of work to encompass other aspects of intersubjective life, including housing, debt, and the ability to build affective social relations.” Moving beyond traditional social status divisions, the insecurities of the precariat are both objective and material as well as subjective and emotional. Precarious work does not provide the economic security to support the necessities of a household and the reproduction of life, threatening amongst other things, the ability to act in public. These forms of precarity compound upon already existing systemic forms of precarity—tied to economics, race, lack of support systems and resources, amongst other factors.

Examining Bronzeville, the majority of the neighborhood is living on less than $33,000 annually, making it difficult to account for day-to-day necessities while also participating in the community. In a capitalist framework, where ‘time is money’, those living in poverty typically lack both. While programs such as SNAPs have been helpful to these residents, they do not address the underlying systemic issues of this poverty. The unemployment rate in the neighborhood ranges from 5 percent to 61 percent—averaging close to 18 percent, and well above the national unemployment rate, which stands at 5.4 percent in September of 2021. While economics plays a large role in one’s precarity, so do support systems, or lack thereof. With many households in Bronzeville being composed of just one to two residents, there are few internal support systems within the home. These statistics are shocking on one hand, but also completely in line with historically redlined neighborhoods across the country. As a majority African American neighborhood still today, Bronzeville has not received the same levels of support, investment, and maintenance as other non-redlined neighborhoods. And while the community and its efforts are strong within the neighborhood, most still rent, which positions residents in a different form of precarity due to market fluctuations tied to housing. Simultaneously, Bronzeville has also taught us that through precarity different forms of solidarity can emerge. If the inspiring work of various mutual aid and solidarity initiatives were brought together to form an urban commons, might this allow for new forms and scales of sharing, collectivities, and ultimately stability in the face of precarity?

The forms of solidarity that communes and the commons promote already exist in Bronzeville through a range of inspiring organizations and initiatives focused on mutual aid, resource sharing, and skill building. This design intervention speculates on how these various initiatives can assemble a network of sharing that leverages the numerous vacant lots in the neighborhood and across Chicago. [Figure 2] The speculative network focuses on four key resources—food, making, ecology, and care—that would be tied to an associated hub building to give more local control to residents in crafting their own ways of life. The network provides a framework to allow for local grassroots activities to flourish while finding symbiotic alliances. This framework is what we entitled, The Bronzeville Action Coalition. Bringing together already existing initiatives and organizations, as a coalition it might allow for tactical interventions to also be strategic; for resources to be shared in more complex ways; for experiments in alternative forms of land tenure and possibly the establishment of a community land trust; for alternative forms of currency and exchange to transpire; and ultimately to realize goals that exceed the capacity of any individual or group. [Figure 3]

The grounds of the former Anthony Overton Elementary School feature one of these tactical insertions: a meeting space for the community called The Center Won’t Hold. [Figure 4] This prototype incorporates a loosely framed enclosure with the intent of delineating space while simultaneously promoting unfettered access along all sides.This framing is proposed to mark the edge of all activated sites which allows the community to visualize the network on the ground. The interior of this prototype is a malleable framework that utilizes a series of curtains for residents to curate an array of interactions—from intimate to collective gatherings. The fabric enables transformations of the space that acknowledges the evolving practices and values of commoning.[Figure 5] The Center Won’t Hold because we live in a world that has complex distributions of power.  The Center Won’t Hold because of nested interdependencies between people and resources. The Center Won’t Hold because the society we want is no longer top down and centralized but rather finds a framework to bring together grassroots and local initiatives. [Figure 6-9] By decentering the commons we might realize a new form of power—one that emerges from acting in concert. Representing this network to the residents of Bronzeville, required exploring a mediums reminiscent of the community’s history of activism and organization.

The Center Won’t Hold was not only an opportunity to construct and evaluate the project’s ability to activate the community, but it also allowed a local organization to participate in this project. This prototype was fabricated and installed by Revolution Workshop, a non-profit organization whose mission is to teach unemployed and underemployed residents the necessary skills to access work in the construction industry. Their intent is to address a rising labor shortage of skilled-trades workers in Chicago while at the same time advancing social and economic equity through job skills training and career development. Revolution Workshop is akin to several of the organizations documented in an intercommunal directory that disseminate the research to the community.

This project was selected and commissioned by the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Participating teams were paired with a neighborhood containing a vacant site that would become the site for their installations. In contrast to prior iterations of the biennial, the intent was to contextualize each project and produce work that engages communities through the biennial structure. The challenge here of course is that meaningful engagement takes time to establish trust and relationships with community members which would be impossible within the Biennial’s timeline. Given that none of the authors in this project was born, raised, or ever lived in Chicago—the team felt it was critical to develop a component of the project, in addition to the physical site installation, that highlights the inspiring work being done on the ground, and provides a resource to the community that will outlast the Biennial timeline.

The number of community organizations currently at work in Bronzeville is a testament to the foundation laid by the various counter-cultural movements in Chicago since the 1960s. In addition to this robust activity, community organizations constantly seek ways to raise their visibility to those who need it the most, making outreach a continuous effort. This project proposes a coalition that intersects these numerous organizations and grassroots initiatives into a network of mutual aid and care by finding synergies between resources and creating greater and more holistic conversations than the sum of their parts. This is realized not only through the design proposal but as well through its representation and dissemination. The Bronzesheet is a series of large-format prints that consolidate information on the various organizations working to provide resources on the ground to the people of Bronzeville. They are categorized by the same themes that organize the design project's spatial network—food, making, ecology, and care. [Figure 10] By highlighting their impacts and missions, we assemble an accessible directory of information critical to creating new forms of solidarity as a coalition.

The inspiration for The Bronzesheet drew from The Original Rainbow Coalition, which intersected organizations such as The Black Panther Party, the Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords into a multicultural movement towards the common goal of social and economic empowerment. Despite nuances in ideologies and approaches, they cemented solidarity through joint action against poverty, corruption, racism, and substandard housing, leading to demonstrations that brought greater awareness of common causes. This model of activism led to successor programs later offered by the Intercommunal Survival Committee, which built upon the Black Panther's work by providing access to affordable foods and healthcare for residents of Chicago. The Bronzesheet is reminiscent of the newspapers and magazines circulated by The Black Panther Party, the Original Rainbow Coalition, and the Intercommunal Survival Committee, which relied on print media to build advocacy and knowledge among a disaggregated organization. These printed platforms were largely seen as a way to inform their community, as well as a source to educate others about the dangers and marginalization their communities were experiencing. For instance, The Black Panther newspaper, a central output of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, published weekly reporting on their communities worldwide and writings about the party’s ideology. It also became a critical resource for elevating the consciousness of Black and poor communities and providing service and survival information to sustain their people. The Bronzesheet takes a cue from The Black Panther by prominently listing addresses, and telephone numbers of the local mutual-aid organizations featured and available to the community. Figure 11-15]  Using the printed broadsheet as the primary form of disseminating this project's research and design components, The Bronzesheet untethers critical information from numerous social media pages into a printed platform that leverages the inherent accessibility of print media.

The Bronzesheets, once unfolded, can be read in multiple states. While a different theme grounds each sheet, the design interventions that bind them in the design project also ties them together through two drawings. On the front side of each sheet is a zine drawing that spans across and connects them, revealing the potential interactions, exchanges, and solidarity on the vacant sites when their value is seen beyond land and economy. Often a key component of a counter-culture movement's rise and continued prevalence, the zine, as a graphic device, frames narratives that fall out of line with conventional society. This ethos made the zine a mission-aligned representation that communicated the new subjects and resources activating these networks. On the backside of each Bronzesheet is an axonometric drawing belonging to a larger portrait that provides a complete overview of the spatial network of the vacant sites and resources. Each tile shares a glimpse of areas related to all four themes, speaking to the dialogue among these resources. As the representation of this project frames initiatives on the ground, the politics seek to bring legibility to actions in the community that often remain hidden. The Bronzesheet intersects the project's design and research components into a resource that can start new conversations and bridge representation and action.

Guido Ruivenkamp and Andy Hilton, Perspectives on Commoning: Autonomist Principles and Practices (ZED: London, 2017), 1, as well as Stavrides, Common Space, 32.

Stravos Stavrides, Common Space: The City as Commons (ZED: London, 2016), 35, 2.

Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, FCJ-022 From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again: Labour, Life and Unstable Networks, The Fibreculture Journal: 05, (2005, 1).

Based on the ACS data from 2015 - 2019, of the approximately 37,400 units of housing stock in Bronzeville, 24,800 were renter-occupied. See: American Community Survey 2015-2019. Data obtained from CMAP Community Snapshots.

Ashish Valentine and Libby Berry, 50 Years after his Death, Fred Hampton's Legacy Looms Large In Chicago." NPR. (NPR, December 5, 2019).

Survival Pending Revolution. (Vamonde. Accessed September 9, 2021). https://www.vamonde.com/posts/survival-pending-revolution/1077

The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, “Intercommunal News Service 47,” in The Black Panther Party Service to the People Programs, ed. David Hilliard (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 47-53.

Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, (Portland: Microcosm Publishing, 1997), 7-8.