As we wrap up the 49th Volume with Issue 5, we present six very interesting and useful examples of scholarship on community development. Once again, these authors exhibit a variety of methods, data sources, and international locations, but what holds them together is the quest to better understand the methods of studying, improving practice, and creating more effective policy surrounding community development. This also marks the run-up to the beginning of a year-long celebration that will feature the 50th Volume of Community Development. The 50th Volume will likely include two special issues (Community Resilience and Polarized Communities), and hopefully some fruitful reviews of various threads across the study of community development including both historical and contemporary perspectives. We invite you to consider submitting a review of literature on a particular theme of interest to our readers in celebration of the 50th Volume. We also note with interest the release of a recent NPR, Robert Wood Johnson, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll providing some insights into family and community concerns of rural residents across the US. The poll (https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2018/10/life-in-rural-america.html) raises many issues for us all to ponder, study, and act upon.
This issue begins with a very interesting examination by Mullenbach and colleagues of investment in local parks and recreation as a pillar of a community, including a particularly novel and retrospective survey instrument used to assess user’s perspectives on park renovation and the park’s place in the community. Next, Anderson and colleagues present an examination of neighborhood associations and their impact on community development. Specifically, they find how neighborhood alliances (NALs) generate community capital that impacts local governance. In addition to parks and NALs, the next piece by Yun and colleagues provides an interesting window into the role that local newspapers play in the development of local community networks and attachment, what they termed community capital. Walters offers a case of community-driven development in Bangladesh and the challenge of a community in deep poverty gaining access to a donor-based poverty reduction program. A poor, but relatively less-poor and more functioning community, received the intervention. Simões argues in his study that youths not involved in employment, education, or training (NEETs), should be offered opportunities to engage in agriculture. Highlighting a Portuguese network-based project termed Terra Nostra, the study examines ways to overcome the challenges facing NEETs and the ways in which state leaders try to protect such children. Zanbar offers a theoretical exposition of how the provision of welfare services and community task groups often are devoid of group development, social roles, and facilitation tools. Community social workers must be aware of this void and work to broaden their tools for community group development. Finally, we publish a review of studies on community development approaches in Philippine universities. In reviewing 217 studies over a five-decade time period, a clear trend of an increase in attention to community development methods and strategies is seen.
As we move toward our 50th Volume, we continue to appreciate all the great effort and expertise of our reviewers, without whom this whole editorial process does not function. It is the ongoing intellectual contributions by authors that are shaped and enhanced by reviewers in the editorial process that allow for such an interesting set of papers to be published each year. Thanks and we wish you luck in the New Year.