BUILDING COMMON WEALTH Every neighborhood has the seeds for its own regeneration. Sweet Water Foundation’s practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND) uncovers those seeds through an evolutionary process of transforming “wastes” to resources that reinforces and regenerates community. RND recognizes that neighborhood development is human development and understands that healthy, intergenerational communities cannot be planned or developed, they must be cultivated organically, over time. The Commonwealth is a living demonstration of how RND is capable of transforming a neighborhood at a fraction of the cost of any of the so-called equitable development initiatives underway citywide. In a so-called blighted community on Chicago’s South Side, SWF has transformed six contiguous city blocks through a series of interconnected, urban acupuncture–inspired installations that were collectively imagined, grounded, designed, and constructed by the Humans of Sweet Water. Each installation, whether a design-build project, program, or event, concentrates on a site that has experienced some sense of loss, trauma, or scarring of history (an abandoned property, demolished structure, or unfinished development, for example). By defying the bounded rationality of traditional planning and development, SWF has reconstructed a community and filled the void of food deserts, closed schools, and economic marginalization through an approach that is ecological, inclusive, and accessible with localized labor and limited financial resources. The Commonwealth has become a Regenerative Neighborhood Node, a point of connection and a center from which new life in/for the community emerges.
“ Each neighborhood, each town, would have public workshops equipped with a complete range of tools, machines, and raw materials, where the citizens produce for themselves, outside the market economy, the non-essentials according to their tastes and desires.” Andre Gorz, Ecology As Politics, Le Sauvage 1974 1
Neighborhoods across Chicago’s South and West sides are filled with spaces ripe for regeneration. Vacant lots, foreclosed houses, and underutilized spaces are all around us, permeating neighborhoods in every corner of our city. Yet, these spaces are overlooked or over-designed in traditional planning and development. RND shows us that these spaces represent unbounded possibilities to develop our neighborhoods in response to the needs of our time.
What if?… every neighborhood had a Regenerative Neighborhood Node,
like The Commonwealth, supported by the City agencies to do the work of the Publics on a neighborhood scale?
1
Gorz, A. (1980). Ecology as politics. Black Rose Books Limited.
Developed by Sweet Water Foundation for Re-Mapping the Publics… (2023). Shared under Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. info@sweetwaterfoundation.com