What is locality development?
As we stated in the first section of this chapter, community or locality development is community building through improving the process by which things get done. This can be an end in itself, but it can also be seen as the beginning of a larger process.
While locality development can be defined as improving process, it, like all community organizing, must be focused on action and results. You can't get people involved in a process, or in creating a process, unless there's some goal at the end, whether that's persuading the city to install a new traffic light or ending poverty. That's why, when we discuss how to engage in and use locality development, we include choosing issues that speak to felt community needs. Only by focusing on taking action to achieve outcomes that address those issues are you likely to get citizens involved. Section 1 identifies four types of community organizing: * Locality development creates an infrastructure for community activism and action. * Social planning and policy change uses the political and other systems to create policies that work toward improving the quality of life for all citizens. * Social action and systems advocacy engage citizens in understanding and building power, and using it to advocate and negotiate for the interests of the community. * Coalition building constructs community-wide groups of organizations and individuals, either to work on specific issues or to address more general community needs.
These four aspects of community organization are usually viewed as separate, but it might be more useful to consider them as overlapping parts of a whole. If you do a good job at locality development, you'll have a secure base of people with the capacity to act in any of several ways. True community organization works to create a community that's ready for anything. Locality development is the building of an inclusive, community-based infrastructure that can then respond in whatever way is necessary to meet challenges, take advantage of resources, and create positive social change.
Earlier conceptions of the separation of the field into three models - locality development, social planning, and social action - have given way to a more comprehensive view that defines the three as interrelated and overlapping.
The Community Tool Box accepts and extends this latter view. It defines the three models as a continuum -- one where the distinctions among models is not always distinct -- best served by an inclusive, participatory stance that involves many sectors of the locality or community. Any of the three can be a base for community empowerment and learning, but each is oriented toward a different kind of situation and result. * Locality development serves as a base for other organizing, and, in itself, is often aimed at community-wide issues that affect everyone: economic development, public health, etc.. Its goal is the building of community capacity to deal with whatever needs or issues arise. It also shows itself in smaller community projects -- neighborhood clean-ups, the building of a community playground, etc. -- that help to define and build a sense of community among diverse residents of a locality. * Social planning and policy change is oriented toward policy solutions -- changing or passing laws or regulations to address problems or conditions -- particularly those initiated by officials or other leaders from inside or outside the community. These policies should be determined through a participatory process that involves everyone they benefit or otherwise affect. This model often involves people with expertise from outside the community working with community members on strategy and planning. * Social action is based on the assumption that there is strength in numbers. By banding together and taking action, ordinary people gain the political or economic power to create change. Social action is often necessary -- and often used -- where serious inequity exists and there is no will on the part of those in power to correct it. The group disadvantaged by this situation, through collective action, can gain and exercise power, and bring about a more equitable distribution of official attention and resources.
Common to our interpretation of all of these models is the assumption that the community has, or can develop, the capacity to solve many or most of its own problems, and to determine the direction that health and community development should take. That means that it has -- or can gain, with help and experience -- the people, the institutions, the knowledge, the intelligence, and the political and economic know-how to tackle the issues it faces. The terms "community development" and "locality development" are sometimes used interchangeably, but a community and a locality are not the same, and working with each may require its own approach. (For convenience, in this section we'll use the term locality development to refer to working in a particular way with both localities and self-defined communities.)