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?

The process we present in this chapter follows the model in Figure 3.1. The model shows a linear process that begins with community organizing and moves on to visioning, planning, and finally implementation and evaluation. There continues to be some debate over the importance of process versus outcomes in community development.

  Process