Product Description: The global economy has witnessed important changes in recent years. In the United States, enterprising communities have transitioned from tobacco farming to growing organic produce, from extractive fishing to vertical farming, from nonrenewable energy consumption to the implementation of solar cooperatives―and have transformed from impoverished neighborhoods into green development zones...read more

Product Description: In the decade following the housing crisis, Americans remain enthusiastic about the prospect of owning a home. Homeownership is a symbol of status attainment in the United States, and for many Americans, buying a home is the most important financial investment they will ever make...read more

Product Description: Understanding the Social Economy of the United States is a comprehensive introduction to the operation and study of organizations with social goals – public sector nonprofits, civil society organizations, social enterprises, cooperatives and other organizations with a social mission – under the rubric of the social economy...read more

Product Description: As the global recession of 2008 and beyond took hold of the American economy, smaller markets were disproportionately affected by job losses as well as the resultant brain drains, tax base reductions, diminished housing values, and diminishment of their overall quality of life...read more

Product Description: This volume argues for reexamination of the field of community engagement, suggests that the most effective way forward requires rethinking the structures of traditional higher education, and points to the growing emergence of evidence-based best practices that can catalyze a renaissance in community engagement and in higher education...read more

Product Description: Written by engaged scholars and practitioners, Transforming Cities and Minds is an "instrument-for-action" on the problems faced by U.S. cities that have suffered from decades of disinvestment. The book advocates the concept of reciprocal knowledge: real learning on both sides, campus and city, through a complex network of human relationships...read more

The world's poor will be the most critically affected by a changing climate―and yet their current plight isn't improving rapidly enough to fulfill the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. If experienced development organizations are finding it difficult to solve decades-old development problems, how will they additionally solve new challenges driven by climate change? This book illustrates how including community members in project design and co-management leads to long-lasting, successful achievement of development and adaptation goals. This field guide provides a system of building block activities for staff on the ground to use in developing and implementing successful adaptation to climate change projects that can be co-managed and sustained by communities. Based on years of use in 129 different countries, the techniques illustrated in this field guide use a step-by-step progression to lead readers through problem assessment, project design, implementation, and community take over. The book equips development staff with all the tools and techniques they need to improve current project effectiveness, to introduce community based adaptation into organizational programming and to generate new projects. The techniques provided can be applied to broad range of challenges, from agriculture and soil and water challenges, to health concerns, flood defences and market development. The book is supported by a user-friendly website updated by the author, where readers can download online resources for each chapter which they can tailor to their own specific projects. This practical guide is accessible to all levels of development staff and practitioners, as well as to students of development and environmental studies.

Product Description: Since the appearance of the first edition in 1990, Planning Local Economic Development has been the foundation for an entire generation of practitioners and academics working in planning and policy development. Written by authors with years of academic, regional, and city planning experience, the book has been used widely in graduate economic development, urban studies, nonprofit management, and public administration courses...read more

Product Description: This text provides a comparative overview of the similarities and differences between the Empowerment Zones (EZ), Enterprise Communities (EC), and Renewal Communities (RC) programmes, and reviews congressional policy choices to target and provide federal incentives to economically distressed zones...read more

Product Description: The debate over the value of community-based environmental collaboration is one that dominates current discussions of the management of public lands and other resources. In Community-Based Collaboration: Bridging Socio-Ecological Research and Practice, the volume’s contributors offer an in-depth interdisciplinary exploration of what attracts people to this collaborative mode...read more

Product Description: Each title in the highly acclaimed Opposing Viewpoints series explores a specific issue by placing expert opinions in a unique pro/con format; the viewpoints are selected from a wide range of highly respected and often hard-to-find publications...read more

In Asset Building and Community Development Gary Paul Green and Anna Haines provide an engaging, thought-provoking, interdisciplinary overview of the community development field. They explore the history of the community development movement in the United States and in international settings. Using an asset-based approach that considers human, physical, social, financial, and environmental capital, the authors skillfully demonstrate how local organizations are better able to meet community needs than governmental programs or market strategies.

Product Description: The Community Development Reader is the first comprehensive reader in the past thirty years that brings together practice, theory and critique concerning communities as sites of social change. With chapters written by some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, the book presents a diverse set of perspectives on community development...read more

Product Description: Stir It Up--written by renowned activist and trainer Rinku Sen--identifies the key priorities and strategies that can help advance the mission of any social change group. This groundbreaking book addresses the unique challenges and opportunities the new global economy poses for activist groups and provides concrete guidance for community organizations of all orientations...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)