Here are a few articles that caught our eye this month.

First, for those of you active in community organizations, or maybe just for your home use too, Nonprofit Tech for Good offers a great list of 74 free or low-cost tech tools for organizations.

Is it time to update the Community Development Block Grant program in the U.S.? Some Congresspersons think so. We certainly agree that rural needs are often overlooked.

Is the landscaping you are seeing in your new developments too predictable and boring? Well, you aren't alone. Check out this article about "blandscaping."

Some of you need a new idea about ways to help long-time residents in the neighborhood. It's slow to get to the point, but we liked this article about home sharing.

And Vienna retained its ranking as the world's most livable city. You can download the report from The Economist to read why, and maybe get a few ideas for your home city.

Some of you will love or hate an article about 12 foot wide townhomes in Utah that allow buyers to figure out where they want closets and bathrooms. The theory is that some will want to use some of their 1100 square feet for something other than bedrooms and an extra bathroom. See what you think. We aren't trying to convince you this is great if you think it's terrible; we just like making people think.

Making a big, broad website like ours work for you is sometimes a challenge. We just want to point out there is a sitemap. Also you can use the search box on top of almost every page (powered by DuckDuckGo, to protect privacy) to find each instance of a word or phrase.

Also we've broken out possible interest areas and provide a pdf file of all of our pages relevant to that perspective or program area. These can always be reached from the sitemap page too, but for your convenience, the links to these pdf files are shown below.

Geographic Focus Area:

Neighborhoods, or maybe you need Distressed Neighborhoods

Business District

Rural and Small Town

Suburban

Regional

International Developing Nations

For Particular Types of Leaders, or If You Are Interested in the Functioning of These Types of Organizations:

Congregational Leaders

Planning Commissioner

HOA Boards and Members

Local Government Officials

Code Enforcement Issues

Community Development Corporations (CDCs)

Specialized and Multi-Disciplinary Topic Areas:

Arts and Community Development

Greenway Planning

Visitor says a CDC is acting in bad faith

It's not an addition, but you may want to check out the timely topic of autumn newsletter ideas.