ABSTRACT
From the creation of community gathering spaces, murals, and gardens, to the development of alternative forms of public space and the reuse of historic buildings and neighborhoods, the examples within this book span a wide variety of projects. Despite this variety, they all fit within the definition of community-built provided in the introduction: they involve local community members in the construction and preservation of community places. They operate within different cultures, such as the African American neighborhood in Hurt Park, Roanoke, Virginia (Clements and Bohannon), and the Jewish-American residents of Charleston, South Carolina (Stiefel). They involve the young (Lasiter; Pratt) and the elderly (Báthory-Nagy). They span different time periods, from the square-log houses built by settlers of the Laurentides in Quebec (Esponda Cascajares) to present day Main Street revitalization efforts (Wells). They also arise out of different political and economic circumstances, as can be seen most vividly in the examples from present-day Hungary (Faurest; Báthory-Nagy; Polyak and Patti).
