posted on March 30, 2010 10:30
Editor's Note: We are fortunate this week to have Cary Tyson as our first "out of state" guest blogger. Cary is the Director of Main Street Arkansas, a part of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. As you can guess, they are the Arkansas' equivalent of the Michigan Main Street program. Cary oversees a staff of six downtown and design professionals dedicated to helping the historic downtowns of Arkansas.
By Cary Tyson
Director
Main Street Arkansas
Arkansas Historic Preservation Program
What is Community Development? There are at least eleven definitions quoted in the Community Development Handbook, the primer for Professional Community Economic Developer (PCED) exam. They include, but are not limited to:
· “a comprehensive process for managing community change that involves citizens in a dialog on issues to decide what must be done and involves them in doing it.”
· “Active voluntary involvement in a process to improve some identifiable aspect of community life”
· “A group of people in a locality initiating a social action process to change their . . . situation”
· "A planned effort to produce assets that increase the capacity of residents to improve their quality of life.”
· “…asset building that improves the quality of life among residents of low-to-moderate income communities, where communities are defined as neighborhoods or multi-neighborhood areas”
· “community building in all of these efforts consists of actions to strengthen the capacity of communities to identify priorities and opportunities and to foster and sustain positive neighborhood change”
· “a place-based approach: it concentrates on creating assets that benefit people in poor neighborhoods, largely by building & tapping links to external resources.”
To further muddle the definition of Community Development we have Community Development Block Grants. Sometimes CDBG grants are used to complete projects that meet what those of us in the place-building profession would argue meets our definition of community development. We also have community development banks, community development chambers of commerce and chambers with community development professionals. If you look at HUD's website on Community Development they list community renewal, disaster recovery and shock of shocks, the federal government lists laws and regulations. USDA lists eighteen different resources relative to community development.
Simply put, I believe community development is best defined as making your community a better place to live, a place where your kids will want to return to. Certainly you can't ignore issues like education and roads in community government, but to really make your community livable, focusing on your downtown is the best way to achieve all of the goals of the numerous community definitions. While building another cafe-gym-atorium from CDBG funds is fine, people need a place to play bingo and dance (unless you live in one of those Footloose like communities) but a better use of resources is to use those funds to differentiate your community from every other place with a just struck metal building in what was once a bean field. I believe that if your community is one of limited resources and you're looking at where to best spend your community development efforts, anything you do focusing on revitalizing your downtown through the Main Street Four-Point approach will meet the community development goals of your town.
How do I come to that conclusion? Evidence that the Main Street Four-Point Approach meets the Community Development needs comes directly from handbook referenced earlier. It lists four types of capital community developers must focus on. They are: · Human capital (ex. Labor supply)
· Physical capital (ex. Buildings, streets)
· Financial capital (ex. Banks) · Environmental Capital (ex. Natural resources, recreation opportunities)
These directly relate to the four-points of Main Street with Human capital playing the role of Organization, Physical as Design elements of your community, Financial capital is similar to Economic Restructuring and Environmental capital being very similar to Promotion activities of Main Street programs.
If your community is not focusing its community development efforts on your downtown, let the officials know that the Main Street Four-Point approach meets the goals of community development as laid out by the Community Development Council. Let them know that focusing on the special places, the places your community has prayed, protested and celebrated is a place worthy of their time and treasure. Let them know you want to live someplace, not anyplace. Let them know that Main Street matters.