The Community Development Process

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The CommunityDevelopment ProcessThe Community Development Process can be difficult, time-consuming,and costly. Community residents often are more concerned with dailytasks than thinking about, and coming up with, a vision of their Community sfuture. Residents want their children to go to good schools, they want decentjobs, and they want a safe, clean environment in which to live. Without avision, however, communities have a limited ability to make decisions aboutthese issues. It is analogous to driving across the country without a should determine a Community s future other than Community resi-dents? A consultant hired by the local government to develop a plan, a stateor federal agency making decisions about highway bypasses or wetlandspreservation, or a private developer constructing a shopping mall or a resi-dential subdivision could all make a large impact on a Community s of a Community need to participate in and actively envision thefuture of their Community ; otherwise, other groups and indiv

The final three rungs represent “degrees of citizen power”: partnership, delegated power, and citizen control. Here, planning and decision making can have three degrees of power in relation to a citizens group, board, or cor-poration: shared …

  Planning, Final