Institute Journal, Volume 2, Number 2: December 2011
By Carl Vogel, Journal editor
Published: December 12, 2011
The Institute for Comprehensive Community Development has published the third issue of its Journal (Vol. 2, No. 2), featuring a series of articles that explore how community development can have the best impact in a complex world. To download a copy of the issue, click here.
The Journal is a national forum for debate on ideas, research and policy on innovation in community development. It brings together the most important voices in the community development field to discuss theory and practice, challenges and opportunities with the aim of supporting integrated and comprehensive neighborhood transformation.
In his Publisher’s Letter, Managing Director Joel Bookman frames the issue by pointing out that comprehensive community initiatives are finding ways to succeed, even as the field is discovering what works and why. “Neighborhoods are complex and comprehensive community development is complicated,” he says. “So it’s probably not a surprise that the questions—let alone the answers—are complicated too.”
A Q&A with Xavier de Souza Briggs, who has recently left the White House Office of Management and Budget to return to the faculty at MIT, offers a frank assessment of a wide range of opportunities and challenges facing comprehensive community initiatives, including weathering fierce government budget pressures. His suggestions include the importance of defining success and demonstrating impact, finding how to best allow different local organizations to work in concert, and using community development as a platform for services that can strengthen families and make poverty “less miserable and dangerous.”
“Designing for Healthy Communities: Active Living and Comprehensive Community Development,” by Active Living Research’s Xuemei Zhu and James F. Sallis, summarizes research on how the fight against obesity can be waged byeveryday activity that is made possible with safe streets, compact land development, local parks and other green space, and well-designed local schools. The paper draws an explicit link between the active living public health movement and comprehensive community development.
The Promise Neighborhoods Research Consortium writes about how this new federal program depends in large part on evidence-based interventions that help children’s social, emotional and academic development. The article also shares findings from a survey of 13 of the initial federally funded Promise Neighborhoods, with some of the first insights into how the communities are measuring results, collaborating across organizations, accessing resources and more.
“Gardens for Great, Green Communities” explains the benefits of urban community gardens, with a focus on case studies from around the country of how these sites can provide local employment and job-training.
In the Journal’s first “Up for Discussion” department, long-time proponents of affordable housing Edward Goetz and Myron Orfield square off in a lively discussion based on this question: “When it comes to a regional vs. place-based perspective, there is much agreement on community development issues. One place where there is a difference of opinion is around where to build new affordable housing. How can we prioritize investment to both improve low-income communities and give families the best opportunities?”
The Journal also features a number of other timely articles and reviews, including:
- A review of a new report from The Center for Cities and Schools at the University of California-Berkeley, June 2011: “Opportunity-Rich Schools and Sustainable Communities: Seven Steps to Align High-Quality Education with Innovations in City and Metropolitan Planning and Development.”
- “Taking Lessons from Medicine,” a review of a paper on how models for moving the findings from health care research into the field can be replicated for youth violence prevention. Richard Mertens points out that other community efforts can follow the same path.
- A review by Anne Kubish of “Complex Systems Leadership in Emergent Community Projects,” assessing how social capital is mobilized by leaders in five communities that otherwise have relatively few economic or human capital resources.
- A review by Sarah Rankin of Michael Quinn Patton’s new book, Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use, discusses the logic and limits of using this open-ended program evaluation technique.
- A reflection on the power of intergenerational leadership in communities, written by Gordon Chin, who recently retired after serving more than three decades as the executive director of San Francisco’s Chinatown Community Development Center.
Posted in Journal Volume 2, Number 2 -- December, 2011