Re-Mapping the Publics…
Sweet Water Foundation’s third exhibit in the Thought Barn—Re-Mapping the Publics…— was an assemblage of art, artifacts, and reflections on city planning and development. Re-Mapping the Publics… offered a blueprint for re-mapping our city’s resources to create true common wealth - the spaces, structures, networks, resources, and opportunities essential to mending the urban fabric, healing communities, and equipping our neighborhoods to thrive, rather than merely survive.
This exhibit builds upon Sweet Water Foundation’s previous exhibit, We The Publics...from Bounded Rationality to Unbounded Possibilities, which provoked a reframing and reclaiming of the ‘Publics’ and offered The Common|Wealth as a living demonstration of the paradigm shift required to build public trust.
Re-Mapping the Publics… continued the conversation by examining how cities use public money, labor, land, and materials to address challenges and plan for the future. The second half of Re-Mapping the Publics… invited us to imagine what if? What if neighborhood development took place on a human scale, fueled by relationships and a collective commitment to do the necessary work?
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
For this show, Sweet Water Foundation's Thought Barn was been split into two sections (see the full exhibit boards here):
The first half of the exhibit outlined the history of the exhibit, shared the We the Publics…manifesto, examined the utopian origins of urban planning and development in Chicago, and the organization of the City of Chicago. Using examples from across the City and those specific to Chicago’s South Side, it illustrated the process and promises of two decades of Chicago’s city planning and development. This section highlighted the limitations of the linear planning and development process, offering SWF’s practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND) as a contrapositive.
The second half of the exhibit demonstrated the possibilities of RND, showing how the six blocks of The Commonwealth have been re-generated over time through the daily work of the humans of SWF. It asked What if… every neighborhood had a RND node like The Common|Wealth supported by City agencies to do the work of the Publics at a human scale? This part of the exhibit re-imagined the city’s functions and resources across seven different city departments, showing how public work could be re-mapped to support RND neighborhood nodes that directly contribute to and foster public health, education, arts + culture, streets, parks + recreation, and housing. Each of these examples pulled from actual examples of RND, using The Common|Wealth as a demonstration of a neighborhood node.
The exhibit also featured an awe-inspiring model of 3 stages of the neighborhood’s history - 1926, 1958, and 2012 - that illustrated the rapid decline and vacancy of the neighborhood. This model, made of reclaimed wood scraps, shows the ecology of absence and gives visitors an opportunity to examine the complicated history and ongoing impacts of redlining and disinvestment on Chicago’s South Side.
