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Community Development

Community development refers to a wide variety of practices that enable communities to rebuild their housing, local economies, and social fabric. It can be conducted in poor rural communities to improve agricultural practices and poor urban communities to rebuild deteriorated housing. It can also occur in small towns around downtown revitalization. Community development can even provide residents with access to computer technology and is frequently used in crime-ridden communities to reestablish social relationships.

Community development is sometimes confused with economic development. Economic development, though, is not necessarily community based and may be controlled by large corporations or governments. A government- or corporation-imposed development plan is not considered community development. Both the United Nations 50 years ago and the Community Development Society today specify that involvement of community members in diagnosing problems and developing solutions to them is crucial to successful community development.

There is also international variation in the use of the term. Whereas in the United States, community development has been referred to as “sticks and bricks”—the practice of refurbishing decayed central city properties—in the rest of the world it can easily refer to rebuilding social relationships among neighbors or even advocating for social change through the practice of community organizing.

International History

Much of the international emphasis of community development has been on communities in the third world. Large international organizations such as the World Health Organization or the World Bank are often considered community development organizations. But they do not meet the requirement of community participation and control. However, a number of practitioners working for large governmental or nongovernmental organizations did practice community development in the post–World War II era. Community development was integrally connected to the green revolution of the time, which attempted to establish new forms of high-yield agriculture in third world nations. Community workers of the time promoted the practice of involving and empowering grassroots community members. Some worked against the official policies of their government or organization to conduct community development. These practitioners left behind new attitudes and hope and provided the groundwork for the modern sustainable development movement in the third world. Upon returning to the United States or Europe, they ushered in a new emphasis on grassroots participation at home.

Perhaps because of the variety of conditions that community workers found across the third world, the multiplicity of needs and issues in any one place, and the presence of community workers from nations that provided a stronger social safety net than the United States, community development in the third world focused on housing, rural agricultural development, urban commercial and human-scale industrial development, and community organizing, often together. In the United States, community work is compartmentalized into separate and specialized organizations.

Community Development in the United States

The historical origins of community development in the United States are uncertain. The early 1900s settlement house movement is one starting point, in which upper-class women established agencies in central city immigrant communities to combat a lack of city services, discrimination, and unhygienic conditions. The most famous of such settlement houses was Hull House, established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Another trend of about the same time was the Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, often connected to land-grant colleges and universities, which helped farm families to be more successful and achieve a higher quality of life.

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