Building Commons and Community

Building Commons and Community documents half a century of Karl Linn's work helping to create neighborhood commons, such as community gardens, playgrounds and parks. Linn's philosophies and practical wisdom show people how to use the resources that they find in their own surroundings to create welcoming shared spaces. This book features more than a dozen case studies, illustrated with 376 photographs that cover urban, grassroots projects from the 1960s to the present. These projects cross boundaries between professional design and activism, offering an inspirational and practical guide for anyone who wishes to strengthen neighborhoods.

Landscape architect and child psychologist, Karl Linn (1923-2005) was a beloved visionary leader of grassroots community building, who brought life to economically disenfranchised neighborhoods in nine American cities from Boston to Berkeley.

Karl Linn built communities from the bottom up, working alongside citizens of working-class neighborhoods. He pioneered community design centers and community gardening movements across the United States.

Linn grew up on his mother's fruit tree farm in rural Germany and fled in 1934 to Palestine, where he studied agriculture, started an elementary-school gardening program, and helped create a kibbutz. Linn later earned a degree in applied psychology in Switzerland. From there he went on to New York and worked as a child psychologist, co-founding a school for emotionally disturbed children. Eventually Linn returned to horticulture and rose to prominence as a landscape architect on the East Coast.

Karl Linn taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania, taking his students into local neighborhoods to begin the seminal work of helping citizens create shared spaces using materials at hand.

As an activist for peace and social justice, Linn also co-founded two organizations--Urban Habitat and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. He spent his last years spearheading commons projects in his own Berkeley neighborhood.