The Power of the Commons
Diverse Public Life
Creating spaces where everyone belongs
This article is the third in a series highlighting the impacts featured in The Power of the Commons, our report on the inspirational outcomes of the initiative’s first six years.
When people from different economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds interact and form meaningful connections, the results include greater economic opportunity for low-income people, decreased loneliness and increased well-being. With low barriers to entry, public spaces are uniquely positioned to bring together people with different socioeconomic backgrounds (as well as different beliefs). This is especially true when these spaces are intentionally designed, staffed and programmed to support this critical outcome.
Today we highlight two cities, Chicago and Memphis, that are investing in public spaces in ways that support socioeconomic mixing. Both cities focused on places where, just a few years ago, people rarely gathered and where a narrative of fear kept many people away. Today, the transformed spaces attract diverse people from across each city and beyond to get to know people they otherwise would not have met.
“If we focus on being inclusive but also being equitable, then the tides turn.”
— Victoria Young, Le Dîner en Blanc Memphis
A focus on diversity and community
In Chicago, an existing network of civic assets in the South Side’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood has been reactivated and redeveloped in ways that bring people together to share space and experiences. This new district of cultural amenities and public spaces is the product of artist Theaster Gates’ visionary placemaking work, spearheaded by his nonprofit organization Rebuild Foundation.
Greater Grand Crossing is a strong, vibrant community, but generations of disinvestment and discriminatory public policies intentionally excluded this and other South Side communities from many economic opportunities. This systematic exclusion spurred high rates of unemployment and poverty, weakened public education, increased blight and vacancy, and created a narrative of negativity and fear.
Rebuild Foundation’s district of cultural amenities and public spaces provides a new and alternative lens — arts and culture — through which to approach long-standing inequities and spur deeper understandings of Black culture and Black history. Today, world-class public spaces and cultural programs attract people from a wide range of neighborhoods and cities to experience Greater Grand Crossing.
One example comes from a key anchor site, the Stony Island Arts Bank. Once a savings and loan bank, the building had been abandoned for years before Theaster Gates purchased it from the City of Chicago for $1 in 2015.
Today the Stony Island Arts Bank is a 17,000-square-foot cultural hub dedicated to innovation, creative production and artistic scholarship, with a focus on Black images, objects and art — and an intention to foster diverse public life and community pride. The Arts Bank welcomes local artists, curators and innovators to lead free classes and programs for friends, neighbors and visitors, establishing Chicago’s South Side as a world-class destination for arts and culture.
In 2022, Rebuild Foundation partnered with Black-owned Anthony Gallery to exhibit the work of emerging and established contemporary artists as part of a yearlong gallery residency at the Arts Bank. Through programs like these, the Arts Bank is creating unique opportunities for engagement and celebration, while also elevating the rich histories, resiliency, talent and potential of the local community and artists of color.
“At this event at the Arts Bank, you saw people from the surrounding community certainly come in. But you also saw people from the North Side and from Pilsen. And then I know, because of our sign-in list, there were people from the south suburbs. So it was like this mix of Chicagoans.” — Shannon Bonner, educator and creative entrepreneur
Creating welcoming spaces
Memphis focused its investments in an area of downtown now known as the Fourth Bluff. Although home to two parks, a historic library and other civic assets, until recently the area was not on the mental map of most Memphians. It lacked a name, and many early focus group participants did not realize that the vacant space then called Mississippi River Park (now River Garden) was even a park.
To change this, Memphis Civic Commons worked with intention to create spaces where people of different backgrounds could join together.
One such space is Fourth Bluff Park. Until recently, this downtown park (formerly Confederate Park) was home to Confederate monuments, including cannons and a statue of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis. The statue — a tribute to white supremacy — stood until 2017, when cranes finally removed it as a crowd of people watched and cheered.
Two years of legal challenges halted the removal of the other Confederate monuments. But in 2018, the day after the last cannons were removed, the park hosted Le Dîner en Blanc, a pop-up dinner party welcoming people from across the city to celebrate together.
Construction to redesign the park began soon after, and in 2020 the park welcomed the Peace Project, an installed soundscape that served as a healing space and signaled Fourth Bluff Park’s transformation into a place of welcoming. Today, there are new pathways, trees, lighting and seating areas where the monuments once stood, reclaiming this place for all Memphians to enjoy and belong.
Inviting programming continued through a partnership with the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team. In 2021 and again in 2022 and 2023, the park was chosen to host the official playoff game watch parties and welcomed large, diverse and joyful crowds.
The promise of places where everyone belongs
“There’s a definite difference in the diversity down here than what I saw maybe 15 years ago. I love coming here and seeing a variety of types of families, a variety of age groups walking around, enjoying the parks, enjoying the riverside, getting their exercise in as a family. It just warms my heart.” — Mark Akin, Envision Fitness and downtown Memphis resident
The Fourth Bluff has become a series of connected, vibrant and dynamic civic spaces adjacent to downtown and the river. At River Garden, a 1-acre park on the banks of the Mississippi River, a $1.6 million renovation created amenities designed for enjoying the beautiful space and the company of others, including an all-ages treehouse and play structure, human-size nests constructed from Mississippi River driftwood, a dining pavilion and a coffee shop. Programming, like weekly Firepit Fridays during cooler months and kayak rentals in the adjacent harbor, brings downtown workers, residents, families and tourists together.
By October 2021, average weekend visitor numbers at River Garden were almost three times those of 2017, before the renovation. Intercept surveys among visitors showed that the park’s users hailed from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and from a diverse geography of more than 40 different zip codes, a contrast to the residential segregation still common in Memphis.
All this demonstrates the power of public spaces where everyone belongs — and makes a strong case for cities to intentionally design and program their civic spaces to appeal across age, race and income while celebrating and honoring local people and narratives.
Read The Power of the Commons for more inspiring impacts from Reimagining the Civic Commons’ first five demonstration cities. For strategies to support socioeconomic mixing through public space, download our guide Investing with Intention: Socioeconomic Mixing.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
