ABSTRACT
Community development has many different definitions. Unlike mathematics or physics where terms are scientifically derived and rigorously defined, community development has evolved with many different connotations. Community development has probably been practiced for as long as there have been communities. Many scholars trace the origin of community development as a discipline and known profession to post-World War II reconstruction efforts to improve less-developed countries (Wise 1998). In the US, some cite the “war on poverty” of the 1960s with its emphasis on solving neighborhood housing and social problems as a significant influence on
contemporary community development (Green and Haines 2011). A major contribution of community development has been the recognition that a city or neighborhood is not just a collection of buildings but a “community” of people facing common problems with untapped capacities for self-improvement. Today community is defined in many different ways: in geographic terms, such as a neighborhood or town (place-based or communities of place definitions); or in social terms, such as a group of people sharing common chat rooms on the internet, a national professional association, or a labor union (communities of interest definitions).
