Community is, of course, a gigantic subject. This is just a taste of the many
powerful and co-intelligent approaches to community-building.
Websites
Resilient Communities Project: "We believe that there are large numbers of folks in the U.S., Canada, Australia and other parts of the world who are looking for new ways to talk with each other about things that matter -- and to begin to make changes in our lives."
The
Healthy Cities/Communities movement provides lots of articles
and links, woven together with the insight that it takes democracy,
sustainability, justice, celebration and all those other good
things -- as well as good health care -- to make a healthy community.
Among the community-building organizations with web sites, you
might find The Institute for Local
Self-Reliance and The Center
for Neighborhood Technology interesting. Some others without
web sites are listed on the "community-building
organizations" page of this site. See also self-sufficient
sustainable village page.
Civic Practices Network - an umbrella for dozens of groups, organizations and networks doing on-the-ground work in communities. Lots of how-to stuff and great contacts.
People interested in intentional communities will find the Fellowship of Intentional Communities site fascinating; it, too, has great links to sustainability subjects. John Curl provides compelling history about how people have worked together for mutual aid, including an inspiring story of Oakland, CA, in the 1930s ("Living in the UXA").
Co-intelligence for communities
Deep Democracy and Community Wisdom by Tom Atlee explores the intrinsic advantage that a community has over an individual in generating wisdom: an individual is limited by their single perspective, whereas a community contains many perspectives, diverse capacities, wide-rangling knowledge. An important task of government and leadership is helping communities translate their diversity into usable wisdom. (For more on the co-intelligent vision of community and societal self-organization, self-governance and holistic politics, see Co-Intelligence, Democracy and Holistic Politics)
**A toolbox of processes for Y2K community work by Tom Atlee gives dozens of processes, references and links to help communities tap into their collective intelligence. It was written for Y2K activists, but 95% of it is applicable to any community that wants to be more co-intelligent.
Co-Intelligence and the Holistic Politics of Community Self-Organization [35K] describes, from a permaculture perspective, some design principles for self-organizing communities. Includes notes on leadership, co-intelligence, a couple of dozen tools for self-organization and dialogue, the spectrum of politics and the powerful formula REPRESENTATIVE DIVERSITY + CONSENSUS PROCESS = POLITICAL WISDOM.
Ways to make a Community Stronger, Wiser, More Resilient and Engaged - an outline for a course offering 26 approaches to making a better community.
Self-organizing community networks - a variety of novel neighborhood organizing methods that grew out of Y2K community preparation work.
Books
Here are some of the stories on this site that relate to community
Measuring Community Health
Sustainable Racine
Ordinary Folks Recommend Good Policy
Chattanooga's Adventure in Revitalization
Curitiba, Brazil - "The Best City in the World"
Circles and Dress Codes
Canadian Adversaries Dream Together
Citizen Study Circles
Future Search in Kansas City
Chattanooga's Adventure in Revitalization
Curitiba, Brazil - "The Best City in the World"
It all began in a Fertilizer Factory
Life Song
Measuring Community Health
Sustainable Racine
Ordinary Folks Recommend Good Policy
These are "imagineering" visionary stories that could happenImagining Collectively Intelligent Communities
Pat & Pat, a view from 2019
See also Community Co-Intelligence (there's a lot of duplication between these two pages which will be sorted out s o m e t i m e . . . . )