What Kind of Democracy Informs Community Development?

Thanks to many of the authors in this book, I have become more aware of the rich body of literature on community development and the lively debates among scholars in this field on a considerable array of issues. ¹ The focus of the Kettering Foundation’s studies, however, is on just one central issue. It is the issue at the heart of citizens’ concerns about their role in a world they see as increasingly uncertain and dangerous, and a world structured around large institutions that people no longer consider effective in solving their problems or responsive to their concerns. This issue is summed up in a question communities ask: how can we come together, despite our differences and disagreements, to solve the problems that endanger all of us? What people mean by community is the place where they live, work, and raise their families, the place where there are (or aren’t) jobs, the place where natural disasters sweep over them, the place where they get their water and breathe the air. People have always lived in many communities – religious, fraternal, and social – that aren’t bound by place. Yet none of us lives in a Petri dish divorced from place, physical, and human.