Community Development
Community development is a planned and values-driven process through which communities identify shared priorities, build collective capacity and take action on issues that affect them. It is both a field of practice and a body of theory concerned with strengthening the social, civic and economic life of communities through participation and collective action rather than relying only on externally directed services or interventions. At its core, community development is concerned with increasing the ability of people to influence the conditions that shape their lives and communities.
Core Principles
Community development is grounded in several closely connected principles. Self-determination means communities should be able to define their own priorities and goals rather than having them imposed from outside. Participation requires people to be actively involved in decisions that affect them, while Empowerment focuses on developing the confidence, skills, relationships and structures needed for communities to act independently. Social Justice provides an important value base by directing attention toward inequality, exclusion and power. Community development also relies on collective action, where people organise around shared interests, and sustainability, which seeks to ensure that skills, relationships and community capability continue beyond individual projects or funding cycles.
Approaches to Community Development
Community development can take different forms depending on how problems, strengths and power are understood. Needs-based or deficit approaches begin by identifying gaps, problems or unmet needs, while Asset Based Community Development starts with existing strengths, relationships, knowledge and local resources. Other approaches include rights based community development, gap/needs based community development, community organising, place-making or locality development, social enterprise, and economic or enterprise-focused development. These approaches differ in emphasis, but all raise questions about who defines priorities, who controls resources and how much influence communities have over the process.
Community Development in Practice
A central tension in community development is the difference between doing to or for communities and doing with or by communities. Programs may be described as participatory while still being largely shaped by external agencies, funding requirements or predetermined outcomes. Genuine community development attempts to shift decision-making power toward communities themselves.
This creates ongoing tensions between top-down funding and compliance systems and bottom-up, resident-led practice. Short funding cycles may also conflict with the long timeframes required to build trust, relationships and sustainable change. For this reason, Capacity Building and Social Capital are especially important. Capacity building strengthens the ability of communities to act, while social capital provides many of the relationships and networks through which collective action becomes possible.
Position in this Vault
This is a central structural note within the vault. It links the major concepts of Social Justice, Social Capital, Capacity Building and Asset Based Community Development. Together, these notes describe both the values that underpin community development and the mechanisms through which communities build participation, strengthen relationships, build collective capability and pursue social change.
- Ledwith, M. (2020). Community Development: A Critical and Radical Approach. Policy Press.
- Ife, J. (2016). Community Development in an Uncertain World. Cambridge University Press.