Understanding Community Challenges, Common Topics, and Concepts for Your Locale

Updated: November 4, 2024

Community volunteer work, and even serving as an elected official, can be incredibly satisfying or intensely frustrating. To increase your chances of rewarding participation and leadership, you will need to learn about the specific challenges, common topics, and concepts that are relevant to the particular situation of your neighborhood or town.

This division of the website is huge, but most of you will only need to know a small fraction of this material.  I have tried to organize it so you can pick and choose.  Just do not underestimate how much you need to know to be a wise leader in your community.

Not everyone needs to understand the following subject matter areas, but if and when you do, just below are the photo links to the entry pages for economic development, redevelopment, crime prevention, sprawl, and sustainability on this website. These might be related to either your challenges or your strengths. 

The difference between these pages and what you will find elsewhere on the web is that I am giving you a point of view based on my experiences as a city planner and community development professional.  

Crime Prevention

Redevelopment

Economic Development

Sustainability Topics

Suburban Sprawl

Sprawl and redevelopment obviously are prominent issues within the broad field of community development, so if your neighborhood or community needs to address these topics, those sections of the website are quite robust. 

Crime prevention is central to the concerns of many neighborhoods, while for others crime is only an occasional unwelcome visitor.  If your reality or reputation about crime is overwhelming, you can start to feel more in control if you learn about the concepts included in this section.

I would argue that almost all neighborhoods and communities need economic development awareness and strategies, even if many of you would not describe your interest in attracting and keeping the retail and office businesses you need as economic development.  Please stick around long enough to find your way to the appropriate pages that apply to you.

I have decided to keep the sustainability topics section quite brief, in spite of the fact that I have a keen interest in this subject matter. While there is so much good information available, if your community is motivated to do your part toward resolving worldwide problems, read through all those articles.

Now for Some Concepts You May Need to Absorb

If you are to avoid demoralizing blunders and see the greatest possible gains in return for your hard work in the community, you might need to master some or most of the concepts described below.  Unlike the heading just above,  these big concepts are standalone pages. 

Some of you may not be accustomed to the term community development. Well, as a spoiler alert, if you were to open the page shown below as "definition of community development," you would find that my definition is expansive to say the least. So if you find the language offputting, just substitute whatever term feels comfortable for you.  

One other note is that under the Planning and Community Development Terms item, where we invite you the reader to ask a question about a term you encounter that you don't understand, you are going to find people asking about both big ideas and smaller concepts and programs, as well as some acronyms. All this is welcome.

But since we have some  big ideas sandwiched among others,  it may take a while to digest all of this.  Give yourself that permission.

Definition of Community Development

Purpose of Community Development

Community Development Principles

Racial Equity and Community Development

Public Health and Community Development

Regenerative Design

Planning and Community Development Terms

1. Community Development
 › Community Challenges, Common Topics & Concept

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