SUCCESSFUL community development begins with the premise that the more people affected by development have a stake in its formulation and implementation, the greater is the likelihood that when the funding stops and the experts leave, what remains is a sustainable future for all community members. If development means giving people a maximum number of options and ensuring that a host of basic human rights are met, strategies to achieve it must combine adherence to universal principles of transparency, accountability, pluralism, justice and participation, while tailoring development projects to the specific realities of each community’s unique identity and condition. The challenge of sustainable community development is balancing the general with the concrete, marshalling a growing body of economic knowledge with the often complex dynamics facing project designers.

Any global agenda for community development that hopes to make positive contributions must be shaped within the context of four major trends or forces: globalization, urbanization, the spread of democracy, and an information technology revolution that promises to increase exponentially people’s access to information. In addition, the world has witnessed during the last decade a dramatic trend toward devolution, with traditionally strong central governments ceding to local governments both the functions and resources to deliver services in an efficient and effective manner. Especially in Africa and Latin America, a new generation of mayors has demonstrated the wisdom of local control over community affairs, in which city hall or the state capital functions as a mediator between the concerns of individuals, families, and neighbourhoods and national policy-makers in the country’s capital.

 

Increasingly, development strategies bring together players from within and outside the community and from various sectors – government, business and civil society. This means people are forced to work together in ways that may seem to them alien and threatening. But an accepted truism of the professional development community is that no one sector can do it alone – not government, not business, not civil society. A primary ingredient of this new mix of talents and voices is trust, without which partnerships flounder and dissolve into cynicism and bitterness. Each participant, and, above all, the members of the community being sustainably developed must feel that the other partners are playing according to accepted rules and saying what they mean. In other words, motives, operations and processes must be transparent, which in part depends on effective public disclosures of information. To ensure that participants understand each other’s values and methodologies, media presentations and use of the internet can prepare the ground for fruitful development work.

Successful projects recast the community from being the object of development – acted upon by international lending agencies and experts – to being an active subject in the process leading to the goal of a sustainable future. However, community participation requires a preceding phase of community consultation in which members can become involved in and share control of the development process itself. The community’s values and traditions should help shape the project, not only for reasons of upholding democratic principles, but because citizens possess knowledge that can dramatically affect the development process. Consultation leading to participation can unlock a storehouse of human, social and cultural capital, the exercise of which on their own behalf can solidify commitment and provide vital lessons in self-determination, empowerment, and producing the cultural self-confidence needed to ensure that development projects are sustainable.

 

When communities cease being recipients of aid and instead become partners for change, they assume ownership over the development process. Empowerment of this sort is infectious: it easily transfers to other aspects of community life beyond the scope of the development project. For these reasons, lending agencies and development organizations recognize that participation must be nurtured despite the frequent difficulty of arriving at consensus. Indeed, a 1994 World Bank study on participation concluded that ‘although lasting benefits from participation take longer to emerge, and are more difficult to quantify, over time they can be expected to offset incremental costs.’ Positive externalities include: fostering training in democratic decision-making; allowing community participants to supply ‘sweat equity’ to the project, hence stretching development dollars; and facilitating an evaluation process in which community members willingly help generate and assess data measuring the project’s success.

 

If government and members of civil society have obligations to act according to principles of transparency and accountability, communities must shoulder responsibility for inclusiveness and equity. Participation must extend to traditionally weak and voiceless members including the young, the elderly, those whose disabilities keep them from active engagement, women, and future generations. When development takes the long-term view – which it must to be truly sustainable – inevitably immediate, individual interests yield to the welfare of the family. Included in the habitat agenda policy cited above is the provision that, ‘each government should ensure the right of all members of its society to take an active part in the affairs of the community in which they live, and ensure and encourage participation in policy-making at all levels.’

The trend toward democratization and the decentralization of central authority blossoms in an environment of trust between central and local governments. Both increasingly feel compelled to involve citizens in planning for infrastructure, environment, health care, and educational projects. New skills must be nurtured, especially negotiation and facilitation of mutually beneficial dialogue. To foster communication between authorities and community members, strategies include creating grassroots community organizations, holding open town meetings, conducting referenda, and using existing networks of individuals and associations. To ensure that the voices emerging from communication do not ignore significant but silent portions of the community, focus groups and socio-cultural research can guarantee that the process of arriving at consensus involves the participation of all citizens.

Community participation is at the heart of a project in Calcutta, India, to formulate an effective environmental management strategy with the assumption that citizen involvement will strengthen the capacity of civil society to address pressing problems of the environment. Rather than being exclusively driven by better-off segments of society, special interest groups and academics, conservation programmes need the participation of lower income citizens, so that they can identify with the benefits and values of conservation. Enlisting the urban poor in conservation efforts holds the promise of breaking the vicious cycle of environmental degradation and poverty. Taking advantage of two recent amendments to the Indian Constitution that place greater authority in the hands of municipalities, the poor are being given incentives to participate in conservation.

 

The fruits of such community participation in conservation are plain to see in Curitiba, Brazil, where for many decades its enlightened mayor, Jaime Lemer, has helped make it one of the country’s most livable cities. His conservation strategies included citizen initiatives, public-private partnerships, encouragement of NGOs, microenterprises, and creative financial arrangements leveraging support from a broad range of contributors. A mark of his success in enlisting citizen participation is the fact that 70% of the people participate in the recycling programme and many low-income families receive bus tokens or food in exchange for their garbage. In a profile of Curitiba in the March 1992 issue of World Monitor, Mac Margolis recounts how Lemer succeeded in convincing citizens that solutions were possible by involving them in efforts to improve their own situation. For Lemer, ‘The dream of a better city is always in the heads of the residents.’ The successful politician knows how to tap into those dreams and harness the energy that comes from citizen empowerment and participation.

 

The forces of globalization on the one hand and the spread of democracy on the other, have presented unprecedented challenges and opportunities for cities and regions to assume a greater share of responsibility for community development. In Latin America and Africa, the shift toward local solutions for local problems has already had tangible results that translate into greater community livability and civic engagement in the development process. National leaders face the challenge of letting go of authority and trusting in local authorities to plan and manage resources in a matter that involves citizens in making choices about infrastructure, environmental quality, health care, and education. Increasingly, planners and lenders recognize that devolution requires a transference of both responsibility and resources to tackle the complex task of urban revitalization, which characterizes so much of the world’s development activity.

 

A 1994 meeting of Latin American and Caribbean mayors in Washington, D.C., demonstrated the growing skills of local leaders, many of whom come from the private sector, to devise and implement programmes at the community level. Power sharing with the national government and automatic revenue transfers to fulfil new obligations have led these mayors to turn to the private sector for the efficient delivery of public services and to involve citizen participation in formulating programmes and policies. Cities are learning that out-sourcing city services such as construction and garbage collection can produce outcomes that citizens perceive as getting value for their tax dollars and making them more willing to fulfil their tax obligations. Decentralization efforts must increase civic participation and build confidence that communities can improve their well-being. Of course, local participation and control does not mean that the central government no longer has responsibilities.

 

Chattanooga, Tennessee – the fruits of participation

By the end of the 1960s, Chattanooga had the dubious distinction of being one of the nation’s most polluted cities. Its dirty air and polluted soil compelled citizens and officials to take immediate action to save their way of life. As a result, in 1984, business, community and government formed a partnership called Chattanooga Venture to help map a sustainable future for the city. Acting as a community-building catalyst, it gathered diverse interests around a shared agenda that seeks to involve community participation and effect systemic changes in the way the city thinks about itself and what it can accomplish. The Vision 2000 resulted from extensive public participation of 1,700 citizens, meeting over a period of 20 weeks to brainstorm ideas leading to the following goals: develop the riverfront (Tennessee River), revitalize downtown, advance human relations, involve public education, create affordable housing, improve cultural facilities, increase job opportunities, and project a positive image of the city. An immediate outcome, unstated but tangible nonetheless, was the civic cohesion that comes from diverse interests and individuals working together toward common goals and public good.

 

Devolution also characterizes the trend in the growing number of ‘megacities’ to rely on neighbourhood and resident associations to solve problems of environmental degradation and poverty. For example, in Hyderabad, India, the city helped residents form an association to be in charge of garbage bins. It appointed one person to go from door to door collecting refuse and then deposit it in a central bin. The cost of $.26 per family was shared between the city and association, smaller than what it would cost the municipality to operate the service door to door. Initial success has led to 170 neighbourhoods setting up resident associations to manage garbage removal. As is the case with any community-based programme, success in one area such as sanitation increases the likelihood that residents will cooperate in other projects that better conditions in their neighbourhood.

 

Traditionally, efforts to improve the living conditions of the poor have adopted an approach that focuses on the community’s problems and needs rather than their strengths, capacities, and assets. When most people think of impoverished neighbourhoods, a mental map of deprivation serves to represent the entire community – that is what they hear politicians and social workers discuss and what they see in the media. This one-dimensional picture has spawned an industry of social-service providers who perceive the community in terms of the extent of its problems and needs. Tragically, residents themselves share this distorted, negative picture of their community and succumb to pessimism and apathy. Citizens in these situations become consumers of services rather than producers of solutions. It behoves them to emphasize their deprivation rather than contemplate the possibility that they have some of the tools to improve their well-being.

 

In such a situation the individual in need of assistance looks to outside funders and experts to make things better, ignoring and diminishing the capacity of those human bonds that exist in church groups and recreational clubs, for example, to serve as sources of strength and provide the social glue to hold the community together in the face of adversity. When a needs-based strategy prevails, the best residents can hope for is survival. Energies go toward maintaining a marginal status quo rather than contribute toward visioning future growth. The pervasive sense of hopelessness bars any possibility that the community will have the confidence and desire to participate in shaping its own destiny.

The alternative to this bleak picture is a capacity-building strategy that identifies and brings into play those skills, assets, and human networks often overlooked and untapped by agencies seeking to improve living conditions. When the strategy adopted assumes an attitude of ‘seeing the glass as half-full rather than half empty’, decades of feeling inferior and without value can give way to a future where community members participate in their own improvement. A new mental map contains landmarks of opportunity, possibility and innovative solutions to the challenge of poverty. Community members must participate in generating this map and use it to formulate a development process that builds on their human, cultural and social capital present in individuals, informal associations and institutions.

An asset based approach to development must be driven from the bottom-up, in order to instill a sense of empowerment and self-sufficiency with community members designing and implementing improvement strategies; it must be comprehensive in cutting across and integrating bureaucratically distinct areas of social services, crime prevention, health, job creation and housing; and it must begin with an accurate analysis of indigenous talents, resources and networks. According to this approach, benefits only result when community members take an active hand in the process and assume a sense of ownership of the development agenda. The role of the outside expert is to advise and provide guidance.

 

For example, on the outskirts of Lima the sprawling shanty town known as Villa El Salvador has witnessed an asset-based approach that builds on the residents’ pre-Hispanic traditions of solidarity. Begun in 1970 during a time of rampant inflation, what started as a food programme of communal kitchens, pooled resources and bought food in large quantities at lower prices. Over decades of service and with international assistance, the result has been the construction of more than 50,000 houses, provision of essential food requirements, basic health care for the entire population, almost 90% enrolment in primary and secondary education, reduced illiteracy and infant mortality rates, the creation of arable land, and establishment of an industrial park to support a growing number of microenterprises. The goal has been to move people from being recipients of aid to small-scale entrepreneurs producing handicrafts and other enterprises. At Villa El Salvador, cultural values of solidarity have served as sources of self-esteem that has produced a shift in residents’ attitudes toward the rest of society, themselves, and their families.

 

Proponents of an assets-based approach to development, John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, authors of Building Communities from the Inside Out (Chicago: Acta Publications, 1993), do not, however, suggest that communities can accomplish everything on their own. Rather, they stress the point that community participation can be a powerful tool of development. It requires a strong internal focus that capitalizes on building relationships between and among local residents, associations, and institutions. A test case in Chicago has demonstrated the wisdom of investing in inner-city neighbourhoods. Banks found that customers actually had a more reliable record of repayment than wealthier communities. If investment returns to neighbourhoods that have suffered from decades of being ignored by lending institutions, communities that adopt an asset-based approach can also take advantage of the density and central location of inner cities, which is why people settled in cities to begin with.

The potential to use cultural strategies to revitalize urban areas across the globe is enormous, given the World Bank’s estimation that 80 per cent of future growth will occur in towns and cities – where the concentration of citizens in renovated historic neighbourhoods can sustain businesses and a host of cultural amenities. When cultural activity assumes the form of historic preservation or a vibrant artist community, rich and varied opportunities emerge for employment and civic pride. Often the restoration of a building communicates to local residents that something of value exists in their community, something that others deem worth investing in. This encourages residents to view their own condition in a positive light, that they too have something of value to cherish and care for. Moreover, preservation of cultural heritage can awaken a spirit of community connectedness, provide fertile ground for small-scale enterprises that attract innovative entrepreneurs, and nurture the revival of traditional building techniques and craft skills.

 

Because culture contributes to societal harmony, a nation’s educational system should use it as a tool to build individual and group confidence and identity. Culture provides the context within which humans attempt to understand and manage the inevitable change and challenges they encounter in life. The traditional humanistic argument that seeing Shakespeare or listening to a symphony expands the range of human possibility through contact with concrete products of human creativity, holds true for an expanded view of culture as patterns of living together. Businesses that rely on innovation and creativity recognize this need and, hence, gravitate to people and places with strong identities, where the cultural environment is high on the social agenda.

 

International campaigns such as those waged by Unesco to preserve the world’s cultural and natural heritage have spread awareness of the fragility of the world’s inheritance. Preservation movements in the United States and Europe have focused increasing attention on the potential of cultural assets to provide enrichment and spur creative solutions to current problems. Like the world’s finite supply of rainforests or fresh water, the survival of cultural resources requires society’s active participation in balancing their sustainable use to ensure their preservation for future generations.

 

Cultural assets come in all sizes, types and areas of interest – from neighbourhood based arts organizations to high-profile regional museums and performing arts centres. They can be public or private entities, and can be found in church basements, abandoned stores or glamorous architect-designed buildings. While cultural assets are located in nearly every neighbourhood, they are often overlooked when plans for human and physical revitalization are being laid. This oversight is particularly detrimental to individuals working to improve the economic and social condition of neighbourhoods because cultural assets can be powerful partners to leverage physical improvements and create a climate of investment, to provide important services to at risk youngsters and their families, to farther efforts of multicultural understanding, and to become the catalyst for regional cooperation.

There are six primary areas where cultural-community strategies are exceptionally effective: youth/families, community building/community empowerment, local economics/jobs, race/ethnicity, revitalization/beautification, and regional cooperation/sharing.

1. Economics/Jobs – Cultural resources can be marshalled to complement and underscore creative economic initiatives; cultural organizations are an excellent place to learn job skills and receive job training.

2. Youth/Families – Cultural processes work as a groundbreaker and foundation-layer for addressing basic needs and skills; arts and cultural activities are excellent education tools that transmit information in new ways.

3. Social Capital/Community Empowerment – Cultural resources are an effective means of strengthening community. Cultural resources are bridge-builders that translate information about culture and ethnicity and reduce prejudice.

4. Training and Leadership Development.

5. Community Design/Planning – Neighbourhood and ‘mainstreet’ revitalization and beautification; arts organizations are a logical place to turn for facade improvements, landscaping and other beautification efforts; the presence and number of arts and cultural organizations in a neighbourhood are known to strengthen the revitalization process.

6. Regional Cooperation/Finance – Arts and culture, both their programmes and their institutions, are an excellent catalyst for bringing disparate groups together with metro (or multi-jurisdictonal) financing strategies.