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As the state increasingly embraces the community and voluntary sectors in coping with spatial change, urban policy has become more difficult to disentangle and evaluate. This paper is concerned with two valid, but different, interpretations of policy evaluation. 'Instrumental' techniques have been primarily concerned with performance measures and indicators of efficiency in public spending. 'Interpretative' approaches have stressed the need to explore power relationships, impact of policy on community competencies and self-learning. The paper uses a case study of evaluation of urban policy in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland to show how specific techniques can reconcile this duality in evaluation design. It concludes by reflecting on the importance and power of knowledge for communities involved in urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to understand how 1968 as a transformative historical moment has influenced the discourses and identity constructions of community development in the United States. Using a post-structuralist discursive analytical framework, the paper examines the nature and structure of community development discourses as reproduced in the language and social practices of the militant wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, the early Black Power movement, Alinskyism and the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty. Rather than community development being constituted by radical democracy, this paper argues that community development is dominated by hierarchical and unequal ideas and practices which invest the professional subject with agency and construct local people as passive objects. The paper explores how the radical democratic practices have been silenced from 1968 onwards and as a result how contemporary community development discourses may be reproducing highly problematic ideas and practices which undermine rather than support community development's goal of achieving equality and social justice for marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Community-based research within American colleges and universities has been widely adopted as a vehicle for addressing local public policy challenges. In practice, this research approach is rife with problems that stem largely from the problem of the researcher's inability to maintain control. In this paper, the author reports on one such community-based research project, illustrating how lack of control is manifested through changing research questions and methods, as well as changing political conditions. The findings provide direction for improved researcher–practitioner involvement in local policy analysis by improved communication and articulation of project goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few case studies exist of applying a sustainable livelihoods approach in Europe or North America. Those that do, suggest that the approach can significantly contribute to community development in a Northern context. This paper describes work in progress in an English market town and looks at differences and commonalities between a sustainable livelihoods approach and the method currently employed by the Countryside Agency. Early lessons indicate that a sustainable livelihoods approach can contribute by building on current methods, including for example, the development of greater understanding of the make-up of a community. Shared learning from both approaches can play a part in building best practice in North and South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, indicators are examined that relate to agency participation in an empowerment zone in a northeastern city of the United States. This study has descriptive and analytic objectives. The descriptive component delineates the nature of services within a designated community and the agency focus on empowerment. The primary analytic objective is to identify key predictors of agency participation in the Empowerment Zone (EZ) planning activities. This paper will present findings of agency participation in an empowerment zone and identify challenges to community development professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has become a focus of planning for urban regeneration in the United States. However, to make agriculture an impactful part of urban community and economic development – rather than a passing fad – it is vital to identify its most effective forms. This paper reports on field research in six cities in the United States where municipalities, non-profit organizations and residents are deploying farming and gardening for diverse economic development objectives. Our findings suggest that despite expectations that urban agriculture will attract capital, create jobs and tax ratables and increase property values in preparation for ‘higher-value’ development, its greatest potential is in social enterprise, supplementing incomes, developing human and social capital and promoting food security. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past few decades, health policy advocates, nutrition activists, journalists, community organizers, First Lady Michelle Obama, and others have created a lively discussion about the United States' food system. This debate is incredibly wide ranging and can be difficult to understand. Furthermore, despite these various food-related calls to action, there remains a disconnection between the rhetoric and available solutions for everyday people. To bridge this gap, this paper advances a new community development framework called the AgroEcological-Educator. Inspired by the practice of Paulo Freire, this social change agent works with people to discuss the ecological, economic, and personal health implications of our food choices, while promoting the development of community-based food systems. This essay synthesizes Freire's theoretical and practical guidance with the needs of the food movement to challenge the oppressive structures of the agri-industrial complex and support the goals of social and ecological justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two approaches to community planning in the United States, advocacy planning and collaborative planning, are compared and evaluated with respect to their ability to empower community residents. Advocates claim they each provide opportunities for residents and their organizations to have meaningful input into decisions made about their communities. However, the approaches differ in the ways in which citizen voice is heard. Two case studies in Chicago, Illinois are used to demonstrate the application, use and limitations of each. Attention is paid to how citizens’ views and aspirations were incorporated in each of the planning situations and how the final outcomes were affected. The paper concludes with comments about conditions under which the two approaches may be effective tools for citizen involvement and community empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the contribution made by the Colorado Healthy Communities Initiative to the practice of community led development. This involves 28 community coalitions in a foundation funded programme to the year 2000 which is designed to improve local quality of life. The conceptual underpinning is social capital formation and in relation to which key process insights are offered on (1) the scale of participating communities; (2) the focus of strategic planning and implementation; (3) broadening the representation of group membership; and (4) the sustainability of healthy community effort. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on a participant-observation study of two grass-roots environmental movements to illuminate difficulties in multicultural alliance building between activists. It focuses on different, taken-for- granted cultural patterns in the ways grass-roots movements create group bonds, and it conceptualizes these patterns as different forms of "movement community." A "personalized" form of movement community in local U.S. Green movement groups contributed to difficulties in multicultural alliance building. These difficulties arose despite the U.S. Greens' explicit multiculturalist ideology and their validation of the "environmental justice" ideology upheld by some activists of color. The paper suggests that U.S. Greens share with other contemporary activists a way of building movement community that places cultural barriers in the path of multicultural alliances. It also suggests that the personalized form of community may be a reasonable, if problematic, response by activists like Greens to difficult cultural predicaments in multicultural alliance building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and analyzes a field work experiment conducted by the Community Social Work Sequence, School of Social Work, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, in which four graduate social work students worked in the offices of four legislators. The experiment was designed to test the general concept of the legislative Ombudsman as well as to determine whether social workers could fulfill this role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that community development has much to learn from the discursive strategies developed within Barack Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign. The discourse of the campaign constructed specific identities of both Obama and the public which (re)produced a collective mood for change. By constructing the public (rather than the campaign) as active agents for change, the Obama campaign helped to fuel the desire and social practices for change in the political establishment. Understanding how the campaign constructs the identities of Obama and the voting public is crucial for community development in the United States and the United Kingdom. Despite its rhetoric, community development often constructs highly problematic identities in which the public are constituted as a passive object rather than an active agent for progressive social change. Learning lessons about how the Obama campaign constructs collective identity may help community development transform these problematic discursive practices in relation to local people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article evaluates a multipronged community development initiative in Buffalo, NY, United States. Specifically, the city's community-based 'clean sweep' programme deploys teams of public servants to distressed neighbourhoods to enhance public spaces and engage residents in discussion and/or action. Statistical analyses of a pivotal year of the programme show that property owners on targeted city blocks appeared significantly less likely to violate property codes after the intervention, relative to remaining owners in two separate study areas. These results suggest that the actions that constitute a 'clean sweep' might make for effective community development in some distressed urban locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses community organizing (CO) in the United States. It is not a comprehensive survey of the entirety of CO in the US context, but instead addresses key components over time and critical themes in CO using particular examples to draw out central lessons for the field. Critical themes include CO's broad proliferation and organizational diversity, inherent political and contested nature, dialectic contextualization, and limited success. Contemporary efforts such as Asset-based Community Development, ACORN, the Tea Party, immigrant rights organizing, Occupy Wall Street, and the Right to the City Alliance are used to flesh out these critical themes as well as illustrate the current landscape and challenges for CO in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the role that social capital plays in sustainable local food networks and community development. Through a qualitative study, we explored the current local food system in the Midwest in the United States, and we began to describe the role that social capital can play in developing this community. We asked the research questions: How can local food systems contribute to the development of social capital in a community and how does the social capital contribute to the development of the local food system? We used grounded theory methods to explore and understand how to support and expand the food system for locally produced foods, including production, distribution, marketing, and promotion. The informants were local foods participants from a community who had roles as growers, producers, educators, and advocates. We found that social capital among the participants, while present and contributing to the system, is weakened by a lack of trust and divided goals. We theorize that social capital expands in a community as a consequence of the connections and reciprocity that emerge with the development of a locally grown food system when facilitated by trust and unified goals among the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The growth and spread of the city in the United States had revolutionary consequences for the everyday lives of Americans. Spatial arrangements changed dramatically. In the process, not only was the organization of the community altered in both scope and variety, but individual liberty was enhanced by increasing individual self-awareness and choice. This article details the spatial changes to community and domestic design that resulted from the American urban revolution. After these changes are outlined, a formal model of choice is developed. The consequences for choice of various local density and segregation patterns are discussed as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in relationships between the government and voluntary agencies as well as the organizational milieu will shape the future of voluntary service organizations in the United States. The author predicts the probable development of four different types of organizations that have emerged in the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the seminar on Community Development in Foreign Areas, which was held at Chapel Hill, North Carolina on December 27- 29, 1954. Some fifty specialists from many agencies and universities were in attendance to discuss this important aspect of assistance to underdeveloped areas of the world. Some of the papers presented in the seminar were: "Underlying Assumptions in Foreign Community Development," by Afif L. Tannous of Foreign Agricultural Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture; "The Scope of Development Work in Foreign Areas," by Arthur Raper, Foreign Operations Administration; "Physical Planning Aspects of Community Development in Foreign Areas," by Ernest Weissman, Housing and Town & Country Planning Section of the United Nations.

Plans for an inventory of current social science research projects in community development were made at the 1960 meetings of the Committee on Community Research and Development of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) in New York City. Morton Rubin, of Northeastern University, is in charge of the project. He is the vice-chairman and chairman-elect of the Committee. The principal programmed session at the meeting consisted of a research paper on the topic "Toward A Theory of Community Development," by Roland L. Warren, of the New York State Charities Aid Association. Marvin B. Sussman of Ohio State University, was the discussant. At another workshop meeting, Harold F. Kaufman, of Mississippi State University, led a discussion on the need for a book of readings in the community development field. It was agreed that such a book would serve a useful purpose and it was decided to consider a possible outline for such a book as a basis for one of the workshop sessions next year.

This article presents information on activities of the Committee on Community Development and Research of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, whose acting chairman is Alvin Scaff. At the Washington meetings of the Society the Committee reviewed paper of Robert Janes of University of Illinois, on factors related to successful action programs. The results will be published and circulated among committee members and others working in the community field. For the Seattle, Washington meetings the committee is reviewing a program on the general theme, "Implications of Government Spending" as it affects various types and sizes of communities. Robert Janes, was elected chairman and Alvin Scaff of Pomona College, vice-chairman.

The article discusses about the image of the social worker in the community and in the profession. As far as the community is concerned, it should be pointed out that, whatever variations may exist among subgroups, most of them are composed of people who have never received the services that social workers render. The first element of tradition about social workers is that they transmit to their clients tangible goods. They are visualized as delegates of the community trusted with dispensing charity. Another interesting phenomenon in American life is the evaluation of professional prestige in accordance with the status of the clients served. As to the self-image of the profession, it is fair to say that it is more negative than the self-image of most other professions. There is, first of all, complaint by leaders in the field about the inability of the profession to state clearly what knowledge, skill and values are needed for every social worker for basic competence and practice. Although social workers may have a poor image of their professional status and performance, rare indeed is the social worker who does not know that there is a personnel shortage in this field. No matter how unsatisfactory public appropriations or the results of fund-raising campaigns may be, social workers know that there are several jobs waiting for every one in the field.

The article focuses on the Family-centered Project of the Greater St. Paul Community Chest and Council in St. Paul, Minnesota. The story of the project is more than a story about research and treatment of multi-problem families. It is the story of how a community was stimulated and organized to retain its focus for a period of ten years on one project in competition with the regular duties of the day and other important community programs. The story reveals a community's concern about those families in its midst who were so beset by a multiplicity of problems that, despite the best efforts of both voluntary and public social agencies over a period of years, they still required a large share of the total community welfare services. It is also the story of a community's search for some better plan of treatment for these families. The story of the project has been the story of a co-operative enterprise undertaken by all the agencies that had been concerned about these families in an effort to work out together a better plan for treating them.

The article presents a discussion on the experience of the Office of Community War Services (OCWS) of the U.S. during the war years. The OCWS was created by Executive Order on April 29, 1943. The first work of this office had been with problems of recreation, health, and welfare created in communities by the nearness to military encampments. Later, as war production increased, there was a strain on some communities because of population congestion in both established cities and boom towns. Regarding the roles that were played in relations with other agencies and with local communities by OCWS, first was that of the secretariat or clearing house. Another role was that of convenor or mediator. Yet another type of function can be described as that of attorney or advocate on behalf of local communities. A final role was that of consultant or adviser. The OCWS experience indicates the values of coordination at the regional level of Federal agency operations, where special devices for circulating information and for consultation between Federal and State agencies on plans affecting local communities not only made for a greater degree of administrative smoothness but also resulted in the pooling of experience and combination of intelligence on the part of various technical specialists.

When a college adopts analysis and development of the surrounding community as one of its functions, the sociologist has a social laboratory to enrich his teaching, a laboratory not merely for theoretical research but for analysis which can be immediately tested for its soundness and effectiveness in resultant social action, a laboratory in which social action itself can be studied with variables controlled in so far as this is possible in social research. Few attempts by a college to become a force in its community have been as seriously undertaken as that by Furman University through the Greenville County Council for Community Development in South Carolina. There has been considerable activity in the field of education. Through the council and its contacts with national educational foundations, the Parker District schools, already nationally recognized, have further developed a progressive education program and the Greenville City schools have concentrated on a thorough evaluation and reorientation of their work. Improvement of the rural schools of the county has been outstanding and is now under the guidance of a rural school supervisor.

The article discusses issues related to the objective of making the country home and family, the country community and association, representative of the best that the U.S. can produce . The standard set might be illustrated or tested in a hypothetical way if a visitor to the shores, from some distant nation, or perhaps a distant planet, upon returning to his native heath should be asked where did he find in the U.S. that home and family life, that community and association so perfected and in practice as to represent the best product of American social civilization. So timely has the movement appeared that scores of organizations, institutions, individuals, and clubs throughout the country have set themselves to the task of study and work in the rural field. The nation, the church, the university and college, civic organizations, learned societies, women's clubs, commercial clubs, country folk, city folk alike vie with each other in their efforts to contribute to the movement. Not all of the efforts, of course, have been effective, but for the most part they have been constructive efforts having as their objective the organic improvement of country life.