Dear Community Development Readers,
I am privileged to supply you with another amazing set of articles in this issue. My appreciation resounds for our managing editor, Dr. Sofia Kotsiri. I continue to thank our associate editors: Drs. Brien Ashdown, Bryan Hains, and Kristina Hains. In our short time as your editorial team, we have stewarded a number of high-quality articles that enrich community development theory, education, policy, and practice. Dear thanks go to our editorial board and reviewers as well.
In this issue, we return to the bedrocks of many communities: Neighborhoods. Smith and colleagues provide us with an important article on children’s mental health and community social capital. The second author on this article is our associate editor, Brien Ashdown. Dr. Ashdown and his colleagues have brought to this issue (and our journal) excellent interdisciplinary perspectives. McCloskey and Maguire-Jack also provide a superb health-focused article looking at social participation and neighborhood factors. I hope both articles will encourage more submissions from others not traditionally connected to community development, as both articles speak to improving the health and well-being of communities.
Shifting the focus to rural communities, Eshrati and Gibson provide a novel analysis of place attachment in Kansas. Readers interested in rural and agricultural communities will find the authors highlighting the nuances of attachment, especially as they note many individuals intend to leave these communities. Hastings and colleagues offer an insightful look at leadership transfer in rural communities connecting their work to rural sustainability efforts. They provide a solid mixed method model that others who submit to our journal will find exemplary.
Two articles in this issue focus on community associations. Dr. Betancur offers a strong critique of community-based organizations (CBOs). He notes their merits in transforming communities; however, he also showcases how they are used for poverty management and social control. He leverages an example from the Latinx community of Pilsen in Chicago, Illinois. Also in this issue, Christens and colleagues examine community-based coalitions, specifically focused on substance abuse prevention. They expand for readers the concept of opportunity role structure in regards to capacity building and empowerment.
This issue also features MacNeill and colleagues’ unique theoretical concept of capacity to aspire (CtA). CtA supplies a language for infusing psychological and cultural factors into community development approaches that often focus primarily on economic and political factors. CtA is interdisciplinary and complementary approach to oft-used frameworks like community capitals and sustainable livelihoods. I hope more authors will build on this approach in future issues.
Finally, Dr. Biney provides readers with a brilliant article from Ghana. This qualitative study highlights essential connections between education, entrepreneurship, and job creation. The article provides great concepts and examples that bridge research, policy, and practice. I hope readers will enjoy the articles in this issue, and I look forward to our future submissions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).