The call for a new commons: by Robert Leaver

In William Butler Yeat's poem, The Second Coming, he notes that it is the center of our humanity that longs to hold together, but..."things fall part...mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." 

In the spirit of Yeats, I call upon you to say it is time for a new commons to help find a way to re-establish many "centers" or many new commons so people and ideas come together, across unusual boundaries to connect in meaningful ways. 

History:  When America began, the commons was the land held in common by all, for the use by all.  Today, when you drive through New England, the town commons is where you experience the remnants of this idea.  The idea of "the commons"--wherever people still come together to connect, or get some work done -- is still alive.  Starbucks is our 21st century application.  Office water coolers create "the commons", albeit it is fleeting.  Historically, parts of Central Park in NY, recreated the commons.  Well thought out downtowns in villages and cities throughout the world still express the essence of the commons.

Today: In early America, on the commons, the cows of everyone grazed, town meetings were held there, people posted notices to either buy or sell something and people met on the commons to foster community, information sharing, and innovation.  Today, times have changed. The call for a new commons is not nostalgia, pulling us back to what was.  Rather, it is about creating the next generation of places--many new commons--for people to gather to commune and get work done--both online and in person.  The call today is for an intercultural milieu not vanilla or exclusion.  It is about bringing together, for impact, differences in thinking, disciplines, culture, and ways of working. 

This is what New Commons is about.

City and Soul Why Now?

To better understand people, community, ecology, and place, we are invited to experience city and soul. City is both physical place and the Greek origin, which is about citizens gathering in mass. The Greeks thought of city as both polis - the throng of people - and civitas or citizen. Interestingly, The Oxford English Dictionary cites the presence of a cathedral for what marked our early ideas of a city probably because it was one of the largest public gathering places in post Greek civilization.

Soul is the depth of origins, the layering of memories, often invisible. One might say soul is what is underneath, the underground, the underbelly - or messes.

James Hillman tells us that psychology belongs in cities because that is where we intensely experience the energy of people who have to learn to be citizens together. And for individuals to learn whom we are by being with so many others. Our immediate recollection of soul and city might be the walk on the street, perhaps the arresting face of an elder or the patina of an old building. Soul is doing its work when we slow down to experience another face or look at the edges of a building. Further, city and soul knows the origins of a place or what story got it started as a place? Further, it is the layers of memory evolving beyond origins both in its collective stories as well as its tales of rogues and business leaders. Further, the memory layers are revealed in what was built at different times for different purposes and with different architectural styles. A building does not have to be classical or traditional to reveal soul. Finally, soul is what is unknown, either longing to be revealed or to remain unknown and what is unfinished, what is to come next in a city.

To sense soul one must let go of the mind and drop into soul, most often through the heart.  Thus, we can't fully know a city and soul through our head. To glimpse the richness of a city and soul we must feel it. The soulful way in is by slowly attending to the particulars of a place: that lamp post, this curb, that storefront - all arresting us in profound imagination. The door in to soul is not the mind or even knowledge, but aesthetics. Here we are not associating Art with aesthetics. In fact, we are leaving Art (with a capital A) altogether out of an aesthetics of city and soul. Art matters to a city, but that is a different conversation. Before we engage art, we have to put it aside or it dominates our understanding of aesthetics. Rather we are, as Hillman invites us to step into, returning to the root of aesthetics, which is to breathe in through our senses, an arresting image or experience the presence of another person on the street. The heart is opened, the body tingles and that is the affect of the aesthetic response. Beauty is present.

Understanding a city requires three distinct lens, three realms of experience. And we need all three to be in soul and a city has to tune itself based on all three. There is the concrete of the here and now facts. City infrastructure, potholes, is my street plowed, and human needs reside here. Next comes the psychological or the back and forth conversation between two forces; tensions and difference are present. Wants are located here; we are in meetings, people are doing the business of the city, or conversing on streets and cafes. Then there is the mythological, the realm of images and ideas beyond all we know with the mind, out beyond the concrete, out beyond the psychological. This is the realm of the unexplainable. The desires of the polis, images of a future city are found in the mythic. A city's destiny is located here as well.

Hillman photo - James Hillman the contemporary father of City and Soul

Providence photo - James Hillman in Providence

Bustling stree photo - Experience