Forging the Urban Commons

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from OnTheCommons.org:



Forging the Urban Commons
On the 100th anniversary of Twenty Years at Hull-House, we remember Jane Addams as a champion of the commons in urban America

By tom OConnell


This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jane Addam’s masterpiece, Twenty Years at Hull- House. The centennial is an appropriate time to remember Addams as she was: a powerful leader and thinker committed to creating a living democracy in the teeming cities of industrial America. From her base at Hull-House, she and her settlement house colleagues, created the public institutions and practices that made modern urban life possible. Although she did not use the term, Addams was engaged in commoning. The principles that informed her pursuit of the urban commons remain as vital today as they did at the turn of the 19th century.

Participation, reciprocity, and democratic cooperation were at the heart of Addam’s commons vision. She believed in the capacity of citizens to confront the problems of a society atomized by the industrial revolution. In the book Twenty Years, Addams paints a vivid picture of the settlement ideal in action. Founded in 1889 in Chicago’s largely immigrant 19th ward, Hull-House developed Chicago’s first public gymnasium, swimming pool and public baths; the first university extension and citizen preparation classes; the first little theater and community arts programs. Hull-House residents were at the center of the first public investigation of typhoid and tuberculosis; lead the fight for child labor laws and factory regulation, and established Chicago’s first effective garbage collection system.

In Twenty Years, Addams describes this myriad of programs and activities but does much more. Through rich portraits of immigrants and charity workers, workers and bosses, machine politicians and middle class reformers, Addams makes her case for genuine understanding across division of class and culture. She and the other largely upper-middle class residents of Hull- House sought a neighborly rather than charitable relation with the community. They understood that they had as much to learn as to offer their neighbors.

A critical element of Addam’s approach to social theory was her belief that democratic social relationships develop through practice. Hull- House itself was a catalyst for civic association: cooperatives, discussion circles, youth clubs, women’s and men’s clubs, cultural associations, and more. For Addams these civic associations were a dramatic expression of free people coming tougher as social equals. As a leading figure in the Progressive Movement, Addams understood that effective public institutions are necessary to guarantee the public good. She also understood that a living democracy requires active neighbors and citizens. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2753