COMMUNITY

DEVELOPMENT AND
PLANNING
COMMUNITY

 A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as norms, 
religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated
in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighbourhood) or in
virtual space through communication platforms. Durable relations that extend beyond
immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to their
identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work,
government, society, or humanity at large. [1] Although communities are usually small
relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large group affiliations
such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.[2]
 The English-language word "community" derives from the Old French
 comuneté (currently "Communauté"), which comes from the Latin communitas
 "community", "public spirit" (from Latin communis, "common").[3]
 Human communities may have intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, and risks in
common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness. [4]
Community development
 Community development is often linked with community work or community planning, and may
involve stakeholders, foundations, governments, or contracted entities including non-government
organisations (NGOs), universities or government agencies to progress the social well-being of local,
regional and, sometimes, national communities. More grassroots efforts, called community building or 
community organizing, seek to empower individuals and groups of people by providing them with the
skills they need to effect change in their own communities. [16] These skills often assist in building
political power through the formation of large social groups working for a common agenda.
Community development practitioners must understand both how to work with individuals and how to
affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions. Public administrators, in
contrast, need to understand community development in the context of rural and urban development,
housing and economic development, and community, organizational and business development.
 Formal accredited programs conducted by universities, as part of degree granting institutions, are
often used to build a knowledge base to drive curricula in public administration, sociology and 
community studies. The General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center at the 
University of Chicago and the Saguaro Seminar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at 
Harvard University are examples of national community development in the United States. The 
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York State offers core
courses in community and economic development, and in areas ranging from non-profit development
to US budgeting (federal to local, community funds). In the United Kingdom, the University of Oxford
 has led in providing extensive research in the field through its Community Development Journal,[17]
 used worldwide by sociologists and community development practitioners.
 At the intersection between community development and community building are a number of
programs and organizations with community development tools. One example of this is the program of
the Asset Based Community Development Institute of Northwestern University. The institute makes
available downloadable tools[18] to assess community assets and make connections between 
non-profit groups and other organizations that can help in community building. The Institute focuses
Community building and organizing

 In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (1987) Scott Peck argues that the

almost accidental sense of community that exists at times of crisis can be consciously
built. Peck believes that conscious community building is a process of deliberate design
based on the knowledge and application of certain rules. [22] He states that this process
goes through four stages:[23]
 Pseudocommunity: When people first come together, they try to be "nice" and present
what they feel are their most personable and friendly characteristics.
 Chaos: People move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough
to present their "shadow" selves.
 Emptiness: Moves beyond the attempts to fix, heal and convert of the chaos stage, when
all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness,
common to human beings.
 True community: Deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this
community.
Types of community

 A number of ways to categorize types of community have been proposed. One such
breakdown is as follows:
 Location-based Communities: range from the local neighbourhood, suburb, village
, town or city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These are also
called communities of place.
 Identity-based Communities: range from the local clique, sub-culture, 
ethnic group, religious, multicultural or pluralistic civilisation, or the global
 community cultures of today. They may be included as communities of
need or identity, such as disabled persons, or frail aged people.
 Organizationally-based Communities: range from communities organized
informally around family or network-based guilds and associations to more formal 
incorporated associations, political decision making structures, economic
 enterprises, or professional associations at a small, national or international scale.
Community development planning

 Community development planning consists of a public participatory and usually interactive

form of town or neighborhood planning and design in which diverse community members
(often termed “stakeholders”) contribute toward formulation of the goals, objectives,
planning, fund/resource identification and direction, planned project implementations and
reevaluation of documented local planning policy. It is a logical “bottom-up” evolution of
(formerly “top-down”) regional, city and urban planning in an era of plateaued or
diminishing public resources, increasing local burdens and responsibilities and public activism
. It often promotes public/private partnership as a means to harness physical development
activities in support of community-defined goals.[1] At a minimum, it seeks community
consensus for proposed allocations of scarce resources among competing demands. In more
vigorous application, community members access a full gamut of planning tools, shaping and
being shaped by shared understanding of a complex community information base, directly
informing and guiding local plan content, influencing resulting development budgets,
projects and thus future infrastructure and land uses, as well as helping coordinate the work
of overlapping jurisdictions, levels of government, internal and adjacent communities and
various providers, such as business associations, utilities and schools.
What is community development planning and its
importance?

 Community Development Support. Community Planning provides new

opportunities for local community and voluntary groups to influence
strategies, services and programmes for the benefit of their communities
Community development planning

 – includes the formulation of broad-ranging

visions, objectives and actions to achieve social, economic and environmental
sustainability and habitability of the community and guides future community
development.
Community development plan

 – a plan defining the current and future

development of the community (at grassroots level), as well as a form of public
participation in the development of the territory. It is not developed by the
municipality, but the municipality representative might be involved in the
preparatory
process.
Development plan

 – document describing problems and providing solutions,

assessing the potential impacts of these solutions, setting targets and results to
be
achieved in the relevant policy area, and planning further action to implement
policies and assess results.
Community

 – a geographically united group of individuals united by a social identity,

territory or common interest.
Social innovation

 – new solutions (products, services, processes, etc.) which at the

same time meet social needs (more efficient than existing solutions) create new
or
improved capabilities and ensure better use of resources.
 NGO – non-governmental organisation.
 Needs – something that is needed for acceptable living conditions.
 Wants – something that one would desire yet it would be possible to exist
without.
 Participatory budgeting – democratic process enabling citizens to determine
how
 a portion of the local government or state budget is spent.
 Association – a group of individuals or organisations (with shared economic,
 political, scientific or other objectives).
 Non-governmental organisation – a non-profit organisation operating
 independently of any government, usually aimed at addressing social or
political

 Local action group – a local rural group represented by entrepreneurs, members of
 the rural population, organisations, and local governments, which operates in a
 specific rural area, representing the interests of the population and taking care of
 rural development issues at local level.
 Local Development Strategy – a community-led local development strategy
 means a coherent set of operations designed and implemented by a local action
 group to meet local objectives and needs which contribute to the Union strategy for
 smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.1
 LEADER – is a local development method which has been used for engaging local
 actors in the design and delivery of strategies, decision-making and resource
 allocation for the development of their rural areas.2
 Smart Villages – in April 2017, the European Commission approved an EU Action
 for Smart Villages, including the definition for Smart Villages. Smart Villages are rural
 areas and communities based on their existing strengths and values and on the
 development of new opportunities to create new added valuet. In Smart Villages,
 traditional and new approaches are searched and improved through digital
 communication technologies, innovation and better use of knowledge for the benefit
 of citizens.
 Silicon Valley – high-tech region in the U.S.A., the state of California. Plays leading
 role with their capable entrepreneurs, engineers and venture capitalists.
 Social innovation – new solutions (products, services, processes, etc.) which at the
 same time meet social needs (more efficient than existing solutions) create new or
 improved capabilities and ensure better use of resources.
COMMUNITY PLAN IS THE GREAT FUTURE, SHAPED
BY THE HARMONY OF
SMALL THINGS!
 Nowadays, community development planning is understood in two ways -
 physically as spatial infrastructure planning and as a social process, where the
 community development plan is the result of a community-based vision
 surrounding the future of its territory and the necessary actions to achieve it.
 In the context of these guidelines, a community is understood as a population that
 is united by a certain identity, territory, or common interest that wants and is
 prepared to make positive changes to the area they feel to belong to. For example,
 a community plan can also be developed by a city population group or community
 that wants to organise and develop a specific part of the city.
 Involvement in community development planning opens several opportunities both
 for citizens and representatives of local governments (municipalities).
 It is an opportunity for citizens to contribute to the development of their place of
 residence and to participate more actively in decision-making, as well as to bring
 knowledge and commitment from the local community into the planning process.
 The community plan developed at grassroots level may become an important
 instrument for expressing the interests and needs of a particular group of society
 to the regulatory authorities in a reasoned and concentrated manner, as well as the
 basis for the implementation of local initiatives. In addition, citizens' own
 involvement in sorting their territory and promoting its growth contributes to a
 greater feeling of community and sense of belonging to their place of residence,
 and to a better understanding of management processes and the importance of
 such processes. What one has created, will never be destroyed by that person.
 A well-established community plan, which provides a clear vision of the population
 on the opportunities for development of the concreate area and the necessary
 investment projects, allows the local government to better understand the needs of
 the population, and to come up with the necessary support instruments, including
 participatory budgeting, thus supporting community-based initiatives. On the other
 hand, supporting citizens' initiatives can contribute to a greater trust in the local
 governance and motivation to engage in the development of their area.
 The guidelines for community development planning are designed to encourage
 qualitative involvement of every person or group of people in fostering growth of
 their territory and to promote the implementation of citizens' initiatives.
 The guidelines include a description of the essential stages and principles of
 community planning to be considered by those who want to create their community
 development plans. The guidelines can help citizens to formulate their needs in a
 logical and concentrated way and justify the necessary support, including one from
 their respective local government (municipality). The municipality can provide
 support for implementation of community development plans, but cannot demand,
 force or expect results from processes that are initiated from grass-roots level.
 In order for the community development plan to be successful, it is important that
 it is initiated by the society, meanwhile getting the support also from public
 administrations, as a result of a fruitful cooperation between citizens and the local
 government.