Building a “Connection”:

“Coming Together” in Democratized Space

In an effort to encourage cultural development in local neighborhoods, the 2012 plan provided for support of the arts within each community by allowing for an “Artist-in-residence in every ward or neighborhood, selected by communities and responsible for local cultural enrichment” (Supplemental, p. 5). These programs encouraged “Collaboration among artists and residents to select, fundraise, and implement street beautification projects in coordination with citywide guidelines and urban design standards” (ibid). Two million dollars were set aside for collaborative projects between schools and communities, a fundamental part in establishing a student’s sense of connectivity within their own community (ibid, p. 4).[1] Chicago’s 2012 plan concentrated on developing a sense of community through participatory, inter-generational collaborative cultural projects within each neighborhood.

Building this sense of community, bell hooks (2003) noted, is an integral part of critical, meaningful and transformative education, allowing students to “confront feelings of loss and restore [students’] sense of connection” (p. xv). She added in a transitory world, because a student’s sense of place may always be shifting, building a sense of community is imperative. Educators must “teach beyond the classroom setting” and open the “space of learning so that it can be more inclusive,” a practice “vital to maintaining democratic education both in the classroom and out” (p. 43). This democratic space, as defined by hooks, extends beyond classroom walls, reaching into the community. hooks further noted building a sense of community “requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination” (p. 36). In my project, I looked at how participatory democratic space created within a classroom may stretch into the space surrounding older, monumental public art, where students have an opportunity to interact not just with one another or their teachers, but also with community members as well as the community’s rich artistic history.

Building a strong sense of community with an emphasis on creating a democratic space had been an important part of Chicago’s history. Before he began writing his 1909 plan, Burnham had already begun creating the parks with their monuments that are now scattered across Chicago, asking New York’s prominent landscape artist Frederick Law Olmsted to design the landscape for Chicago’s 1893 Columbia Exposition (Appendix C), now known as Jackson Park. Olmsted’s original plan stood in contrast to the more formal elements proposed by Burnham, who envisioned acres of impermanent Neoclassical structures. He repeatedly had to modify his original plans to suit Burnham’s demands, but he designed Stony Island (Appendix D) as an isolated area separated from “all the splendor and glory and noise and human multitudinousness of the great surrounding Babylon” (Olmsted in Hall, 1995, p. 214). While the current plan eliminated such grandiose language, the goal of unity through diversity remains: “Culture is the fabric of community interactions,” the 2012 plan asserted, adding, “Culture breaks down barriers” (Final, p. 9). Olmsted also stated his belief that trees possess healing qualities, noting, “Air is disinfected by sunlight and foliage. Foliage also acts mechanically to purify the air by screening it” (Plan, p. 32). Olmsted’s notion of landscape as a healing, unifying factor in parks was assimilated into the 2012 Plan, but culture was substituted as panacea instead. The 2012 plan stressed as one of its priorities its ability to “effectively communicate the impact of culture on Chicago’s vitality across civic goals,” listing “economic development, public safety, public health, strong neighborhoods and communities” as some outcomes of cultural development (Final, p. 21). Olmsted’s theories of nature as a beneficial element were subsumed by cultural development in Chicago’s current plan.

Olmsted (1870) also noted the spirit of unity as people gathered in his parks, where one could “find a body…coming together, and with an evident glee in the prospect of coming together,” a group in which “all classes [were] largely represented” (p. 40). The reader must note the democratizing affect of naturalized landscape was not intended, however, to eliminate class division, a point I found to still be blatantly evident in Chicago today.[1] Olmsted planned this amalgamation of classes would gather “with a common purpose…competitive with none, disposing to jealousy and spiritual or intellectual pride toward none, each individual adding by his mere presence to the pleasure of all others, all helping to the greater happiness of each” (ibid). Olmsted intentionally designed Chicago’s extensive public park system (with their numerous monuments) to be a shared space allowing various classes to be brought together, a democratic space similar to what hooks described.

Diversity and culture were integral to Olmsted’s original implementation of his design, aspects also valued by Chicago’s 2012 plan. For Olmsted, nature itself drew all people together, having a democratizing effect. Modern Chicagoans today, however, do not exist in this Romantic age, yet the current plan, as I have noted, has borrowed heavily from the theories of Burnham and Olmsted.

Olmsted’s landscape designs were an artistic expression themselves. As he designed the foliage intended to purify the air of the crowded 1893 Exhibition in Chicago, he hoped to orchestrate even the “effects of the boats and the water fowl as incidents of movement and life, the bridges with respect to their shadows and reflections, their effect in extending apparent perspectives and in connecting terraces and buildings” (Olmsted in Hall, p. 214).[1]  He spoke of lagoons as canvas, with water serving to unite buildings “together and thus creating unity of composition” (ibid).[2] Burnham acknowledged the artistry with which Olmsted painted his landscape, noting during a banquet celebrating the success of the Exposition that as artist, Olmsted “paints with lakes and wooded slopes, with lawns and bands and forest-covered hills, with mountainsides and ocean views” (Burnham in Hall, p. 216-17). Without Olmsted’s masterful artistry, Burnham conceded, Chicago’s Exposition would not have been counted as a success, and the tradition of landscape as art continues in Chicago’s parks today (ibid). Without Olmsted and Burnham’s foresight, Chicago educators would not now have these democratized classrooms without walls they were encouraged to utilize in the 2012 Cultural plan. In these vast landscaped areas, many of the historical monuments have fallen into decay, yet because they sit at the busiest intersections in Chicago, we pass by many of them on a daily basis. In part, because of their locations alone, we interact with them on a number of levels. By sheer design of the street layout as proposed by Burnham in 1909, both local residents and tourists come face to face with many of these monuments regularly. Yet it is perhaps for this very reason they have become mere artifact—much in the way a bus stop is—that inures us to their presence, thereby shaping how we currently respond to them. Often, because they are seemingly commonplace artifacts in our daily routines, we are dismissive of their presence.

Olmsted’s landscape designs were an artistic expression themselves. As he designed the foliage intended to purify the air of the crowded 1893 Exhibition in Chicago, he hoped to orchestrate even the “effects of the boats and the water fowl as incidents of movement and life, the bridges with respect to their shadows and reflections, their effect in extending apparent perspectives and in connecting terraces and buildings” (Olmsted in Hall, p. 214).[3]  He spoke of lagoons as canvas, with water serving to unite buildings “together and thus creating unity of composition” (ibid). Burnham acknowledged the artistry with which Olmsted painted his landscape, noting during a banquet celebrating the success of the Exposition that as artist, Olmsted “paints with lakes and wooded slopes, with lawns and bands and forest-covered hills, with mountainsides and ocean views” (Burnham in Hall, p. 216-17). Without Olmsted’s masterful artistry, Burnham conceded, Chicago’s Exposition would not have been counted as a success, and the tradition of landscape as art continues in Chicago’s parks today (ibid). Without Olmsted and Burnham’s foresight, Chicago educators would not now have these democratized classrooms without walls they were encouraged to utilize in the 2012 Cultural plan. In these vast landscaped areas, many of the historical monuments have fallen into decay, yet because they sit at the busiest intersections in Chicago, we pass by many of them on a daily basis. In part, because of their locations alone, we interact with them on a number of levels. By sheer design of the street layout as proposed by Burnham 1909, both local residents and tourists come face to face with many of these monuments regularly. Yet it is perhaps for this very reason they have become mere artifact—much in the way a bus stop is—that inures us to their presence, thereby shaping how we currently respond to them. Often, because they are seemingly commonplace artifacts in our daily routines, we are dismissive of their presence.