6: Community development in action
Community development can contribute to outcomes in many different policy fields: community safety and crime reduction, culture and the arts, education, environment and sustainable development, health and well-being, housing, planning, regeneration and local economic development among them. However, as the following sections demonstrate, many of these issues cannot be divided neatly into policy silos or dealt with by separate professional disciplines. Community development strategies that reduce inequalities and community tensions generally, for example, also aim to improve well-being, living conditions and life chances.
Fear of crime and nuisance behaviours are real issues for many communities. On the one hand, they make people unwilling to engage; on the other, legitimate unease can be whipped up into vigilante campaigns – against street sex work or ‘county lines’ drugs dealing, for example. While residents might understandably want to take action to protect their neighbourhood, local communities should be persuaded to organise group activities that minimise harms without confronting the perpetrators. By addressing milder forms of vandalism or dangerous and antisocial behaviour, community development can increase people’s sense of local pride and mutual responsibility, thus giving them confidence to address more serious issues.
Community safety strategies cover several issues that trouble both policy makers and local communities, including domestic violence and hate crimes. Community development approaches have been used by public authorities and voluntary organisations to improve community safety, for example in relation to arson, gang violence, traffic accidents and/or nuisance behaviour. These involve public and peer education about risks, alongside a commitment to listening to community concerns, developing solutions that will work in given circumstances and generally trying to improve relations between community members and public services such as the police, firefighters and planners.
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