Exploring the Relationship Between Sustainability and Collaboration: Evidence from All-America City Applications
In analyzing the applications for All-America status, the authors found an evolution in the understanding and scope of sustainability and changing conceptions and ways of implementing collaborative problem-solving efforts.
Learning How Citizens Impact Education
Schools can’t educate students by themselves. It takes all the skills and resources of a community to do the job. Citizen initiatives are different from more formal youth development and youth services programs. They are organic grassroots enterprises that arise in direct response to local education values, problems, and life skill developments.
Police-Community Relations and Services Are Changing in a Positive Way in Cities Throughout America
Evolving ideas about “best practices” are highlighted in this article about changes in the policies and practice of police departments.
A Framework for Fiscal Sustainability
With the help of a group of researchers, the Government Finance Officers Association has developed a frame-work for fiscal policy-making at the local level based on Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning theories about the sustainable consumption of finite, common pool resources.
Why Process Matters: Democracy and Human Nature
Providing opportunities for people to express their opinions is only the first step in efforts to address difficult community problems. We also need our public processes to allow people to develop mutual under-standing and trust. We need processes that help us elevate quality arguments and expose weak or manipulative ones.
You’re On The Air!: How Government Access Television Enhances Public Engagement
Austin, Texas, is using television to scale-up public participation in ways that are more cost-effective and less labor-intensive than other public engagement methods.
Exploring the Elements of Social Capital: Leverage Points and Creative Measurement Strategies for Community Building and Program Evaluation
The term “social capital” has no universally accepted meaning. It is up to its users to add new meanings and interpretations to our collective understanding of this very useful community-building concept.
An Interview with Kimball Payne, City Manager of Lynchburg, Virginia
The death of an African-American in police custody led to a community dialogue and, ultimately, to the development of efforts to engage the public in problem-solving and decision-making.
