Catching Up - Community Engagement, Complexity and Other Issues to Contemplate

It has been more than a month since the last post was uploaded on to this blog. There was some vacation time around the Baltic Sea included in there, but the primary excuse is that it takes awhile to get my head around some of the concepts with which this blog addresses and then tie them all together.  So most of the online activities have been quick, short posting through Twitter, the Facebook page or interacting through LinkedIn with the more in depth contemplations stewing in the draft folder of my Mac. 

One of the concepts being wrestled with is complexity.  It has been alluded to or briefly addressed in past posts but not as fully as needed.  There is an extensive discussion of management and complexity on the Harvard Business Review LinkedIn group which provided a diversity of perspectives.  Insights derived from that discussion and past posts will be posted here in the next week of two.  Complexity is inherent not only in the challenges facing communities but in the solutions as well.  The presumption of using a word like paradigm in the title of this effort is based on the perspective that we not only need to change what we do, but also how and why we do it at a fundamental or radical level.  

In the last published post I wrote about, “Community governance as an arena for community engagement”.  This sounds a bit like a tautology.  What else would community governance be about if not community engagement?  The reality is quite different though with many existing city governments as has been discussed in previous posts.  You can insert ‘community engagement’ into the new search app to find them.  The truth is that achieving a high level of community engagement both in numbers and in level of participation will invariably bring about a greater degree of complexity into a system of community governance.

The primary practical problem is getting enough people to reach some determined tipping point to meet at the community hall first. In other words, getting the community engaged enough to come together to cause the new community paradigms to be established.  

It is not enough though just to get everybody into the same room and allow everybody to have their three to five minute speeches.  We also need to have a process of working together collaboratively to bring about innovative and viable solutions to complex and ‘wicked’ problems.

In a previous post, the focus was on devising a process by which members of a community could collaboratively think about the challenges facing them in a systematic, as well as an objective and transparent manner.  The methodology suggested was Systems Thinking.  Theoretically there could be forums in which people could gather in community halls to use principles of deliberative democracy and Systems Thinking to address their community’s challenges including greater community engagement.  

This means attaining a greater understanding of what we mean by community, by engagement and how those two concepts work together.  This effort has resulted in explorations outside of the former area of professional concern, economic development, Systems Thinking being just one of them and radical community engagement being another.  

Systems Thinking though seems to work on a more macro level which is understandable since Systems Thinking looks at systems as a whole.  A more micro-focused means of collaboration is also needed.  One possible means is Design Thinking.  With that in mind, I have started an online Design Thinking Action Lab course taught by Leticia Britos Cavagnaro from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University using the New Community Paradigms endeavor as the premise for participation.  I will be reporting on that effort on these pages as well in the future.  

In the mean time there have been other changes and updates. 

A ‘Search this Blog and Connected Resources’ has been added on to the righthand column under the ‘Related Pages’ Diigo Update information.  Hopefully this makes this blog a more useful resource.  

Just below that is an update and upgrading to the TED City 2.0 information to the 2013 version. On September 20, 2013, both TED and TEDX will be holding programs related to, “All elements whose presence will dictate the success of our future cities”.  Will be following that closely and providing updates when they become available. 

Finding the soul of your community and the reason to create your own community paradigms

In the last post, Placemaking - for communities the canvas becomes the art, we began exploring the concept of  Place and Placemaking from the perspective of  Project for Public Spaces or PPS and similar organizations.

Placemaking, was defined by PPS as both an overarching idea and a hands-on tool for improving a neighborhood, city or region.  The linked to site went on to say of Placemaking:

Put simply, it involves looking at, listening to, and asking questions of the people who live, work and play in a particular space, to discover their needs and aspirations. This information is then used to create a common vision for that place.

The New Community Paradigm Places wikipage  which will serve as a depository for community resources on Place was also introduced.  Community Places, was examined in the last post.  This post will deal with what has been described as the  Soul of a Community.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Gallup joined forces and following an approach similar to PPS studied cities across the country to determine what attaches people to their communities by launching the Knight Soul of the Community project in 2008.  Three years and close to 43,000 interviews later with people in 26 communities, the study found three main qualities responsible for attaching people to place:

1. Social offerings, such as entertainment venues and places to meet, 
2. Openness (how welcoming a place is) and 
3. Area’s aesthetics (its physical beauty and green spaces)

The same three answers apply to cities across the country as shown by the Vimeo video below An Explanation of Community Attachment - Soul of the Community Project.




What is even more interesting is that these three aspects which provide for Residential or Community Attachment also have a strong correlation with economic prosperity.  By studying the 26 individual cities that participated in the study, it is possible to determine what steps can be taken to replicate the same results.  The study showed both good and opportunities for improvement in each city. Each city had a its own story to tell. The stories were of place and, more importantly, the stories were of people and how they interacted with the place they called their community.

From the Aberdeen post:

Despite its high ratings of resident caring, social offerings remains a challenge area for Aberdeen, specifically in the areas of local night life and arts and cultural events. This must be addressed as these areas are particularly important to young people. Over the past three years of the study, Aberdeen has made significant gains in attaching young people 18-34 years old to the community. Imagine what could be possible with more attention to these aspects of social offerings.

From the Corpus Christi post:

The comments I had read in the article announcing the presentation flooded my mind as I stood facing what seemed to be a completely different crowd that night. And I worried about deflating that crowd with my honest response. But I said, “It seems to me that some of you, and I’m not sure if you’re in this room, but some of you are stuck in place.”

The Soul of the Community study helps identify new approaches to help create transformational change and new possibilities for continued progress, in other words it helps in creating new community paradigms.  A community can use the study’s findings to help optimize the strengths of their community and address the challenge of improving of areas community attachment thereby potentially increasing local economic growth.


This effort' to create new community paradigms began by looking at economic development in working to create Liveable Cities through Liveanomics.  The relationship of community attachment to economic development in the Soul of the Community Study provides particular relevance for this effort by going beyond the recent economic crisis as the study's findings can help leaders include new ideas into the existing economic rebuilding and development conversation.

Good economics and finance are essential to the sustainability of a city but they are not the soul of the community and do not make up the all of that community's wealth.  This was demonstrated in the one Southern California city included in Knight Soul of the Community Study - Long Beach, California..

Ratings of the local economy increased in 2010; however, the economy is still not a key factor emotionally connecting residents to their communities. Perception of local leadership is rated lower in 2010, but it is not a key driver in attaching residents to Long Beach.

To increase its community wealth, Long Beach added to its own natural assets of good weather and relaxed Southern California attitude by investing in high-quality bicycle infrastructure and encouraging bike-related businesses.

Long Beach according to PPS offers charisma according to their online article How Charismatic Is Your City? showing that there is more to a community than just the city budget and that investments into the livability of the community can have a long term return on that investment.  Charlie Gandy, mobility coordinator of the city of Long Beach, California talks about his city and what they have done to enhance their charisma for the members of the community and others in this TEDx. video.