Building Commons and Community

Many years in the making, Building Commons and Community by Karl Linn documents the collaborative environmental design and community building work he initiated and inspired - the creation of a variety of commons, permanent and temporary, indoor and out, starting in the early 1960s. This generously illustrated 224-page, 10 x 8.5-inch, hardcover book was published by New Village Press in 2007. For more information and to order, go to New Village Press. You will also find the table of contents, reviews, and audios of Karl's collaborators talking about his legacy.

If you are in the San Francisco East Bay, you can phone New Village Press and make an appointment to stop by and purchase any of their titles. They are a not-for-profit press sponsored by Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), very appropriate since Karl was a cofounder of ADPSR in 1981. Thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation's Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative, which helped subsidize the printing, this high-quality, full-color book costs only $29.95 and is sometimes discounted.

New download from Building Commons and Community:
Download Karl's ten-page final chapter, "The Foundations of Commons Building" or a two-page synopsis of the chapter, useful for sharing with team members in a participatory planning process.

Karl Linn (1923 - 2005) landscape architect, psychologist, and educator, spent the last forty-four years of his life, guiding the transformation of abandoned vacant lots and drab institutional settings into vibrant community spaces. He was inspired by the fact that when people come together to build or transform the places they share, they also build community.

Watch and listen to Karl reflecting on his life and work in Karl Linn's Journey, a Digital Media Biography by Verona Fonté. We hope that information about Karl's life and work will inspire you to get involved in collaborative efforts to build community through environment.

Within the site you'll find a wiki for the Westbrae Commons projects that Karl shepherded into being and are now being managed and expanded by community residents. There are wiki pages for each of the commons projects that Karl shepherded into existence in his North Berkeley neighborhood. See Projects Wiki.