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Karl Linn 1923-2005:
Building a Just World, One Garden at a tTime
IN NORTHWEST BERKELEY, a greenway flows from a community garden where people gather amidst lush vegetation, artworks, and eco-friendly technology. Native plants, art, and interpretive panels tell the natural and cultural history of the neighborhood and inspire walkers and bikers to slow down and socialize. The creation of these life-enhancing environments was inspired and guided by community activist Karl Linn.
In 1959 Linn abandoned a prestigious career in landscape architecture to join the landscape architecture faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. He developed a service-learning curriculum, taking his students into economically disenfranchised inner-city communities where they identified vacant land and potential building materials. They worked with residents to design "neighborhood commons," places close to home where people could relax, socialize, and celebrate the special occasions of their lives. Linn inspired volunteer professionals, youth teams, social service agencies, and city governments to be part of "barnraising commons."
The pioneering community design-and-build centers he founded in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., became models for the Domestic Peace Corps.
Linn recognized that reclaiming land for commons created a foundation for the growth of grassroots democracy. He went on to inspire the creation of similar centers in eight other cities. Meanwhile he encouraged his students to create commons by personalizing their campus environments.
Linn inspired Carl Anthony, now director of the Ford Foundation's Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative, to coordinate the creation of a neighborhood commons in Harlem in 1963. Anthony credits Linn with advocating for environmental justice two decades before the field had a name.
Later, responding to the nuclear arms race, Linn conducted workshops helping students and colleagues break through suppressed anxiety about the future, which hampered their ability to design spaces. He took early retirement from a tenured professorship in 1986 to help found Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility and to chair its Education Committee.
Moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, he teamed up with Carl Anthony to start the Urban Habitat Program to develop multiracial environmental leadership and restore inner-city neighborhoods. With the help of his wife, pianist-composer Nicole Milner, Linn worked tirelessly securing land for community gardens, nurturing the development of project teams, and promoting dialogue. One of his passions was the East Bay Dialogue Group of Arabs and Jews.
Karl Linn died on February 3, 2005, at the age of 81.
Written by Diana Young, a freelance editor and graphic designer, who supports community building, permaculture, conflict resolution, and the Earth Charter.
This article was published in YES! "Summer 2005 What Makes a Great Place?"
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