Searching for ‘community’ and ‘community involvement’ in urban policy

ABSTRACT

The idea of ‘community involvement’ has regained its importance in many parts of the world. However the meaning and application of community involvement are still not considered to be clearly defined. This lack of clarity often leads to contradictions and it prevents governments from providing clear policy purpose. This paper, therefore, starts by searching for the idea of community and community involvement and how it is interpreted in different cultural contexts. It then moves to explore different approaches towards, and models of, community involvement in urban policy including the current debates on their strengths and weaknesses. In the conclusion, this paper discusses the gap between academic inquiry and development practice in the real world.

KEYWORDS:

• Community
• community involvement
• different cultural contexts
• urban policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 According to Etzioni (1997, pp. 27–28), for communitarians, a good society requires a balance between autonomy and order. And the order has to be of a special kind: voluntary and limited to core values rather than imposed or pervasive. And autonomy has to be contextualized within a social fabric of bonds and values rather than unbound.