The Community Development Theory and Practice - Assignment Example

ASD704 Community Development Theory and Practice A Assignment 2 Your peers have asked you to run a 3 hour workshop on what CD means. Provide a copy of your program and materials. Explain your choices (ensuring you refer to literature). Community Development Physical Community Development Goals Organizing and arranging areas for settlements always starts by using the strategies and knowledge of physical planning. Physical planning combined with community designing is a product of evaluating other disciplines such as physiology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, behavioral sciences, philosophy, art history, and even fine arts, which are all facets of comfortable living. Moreover, physical community development is focused on answering the various possible needs of the people in terms of physical, social, economic, and political aspects. Specifically, below are the objectives of physical community development (Costonis,1989): • To plan for the community which will fit into all the possible considerations regardless of the plan’s simplicity and/or complexity • To establish a flexible plan with which varied groups will be able to use for different purposes It should be noted that normally, categorization, as a vital part of community development, is based on different research about basic human needs and perceived requirements about the wide range of concepts. Hence, before finalizing the nomenclature in detail, some background information can be of much help (Costonis, 1989). First of which is preparing the plan in a manner that considers the two most essential components of the community: the physical environment and the user. The way people interact with the environment and vice versa, is a critical information for on this will rise all other background information regarding comfortable and efficient community living (Costonis, 1989). This is because the environment per se is the actual geography that users experience. An environment is composed of several elements such as masses (which include landforms, buildings, and structures), spaces (like parks and other types of open areas), and paths (which served as the linear travel ways). Users, on the other hand, are those who experience community design. They are those who literally walk through cities and towns, visit the stores, and sit in parks. In doing this, they use physical, psychological, and sociological ‘senses’ to answer various human needs such as (Greene, 1982): • sensory satisfaction • safety and security • contain personal space and group space which will be for recreation, learning, socializing, and other group activities • diversity, mobility and self-development, and • sense of belonging, pride, and self-worth • beauty and aesthetic pleasure. Principles There are four principles of community designing, on a physical basis. This includes (Alexander, et. al, 1987): 1. The design should work effectively for the convenience and comfort of the users. 2. The order of the plan should assure that users will become fully oriented to the environment and understand it. 3. The identity of each and every user should denote a visual image of the environment that mirrors special or unique qualities. 4. The appeal of the design should be characterized in a way that it will give pleasure to the users regardless of the time Aspects of Community Development In today’s world, planning and designing the organization of the community is not an easy task. There are certain considerations that policy makers and community planners have to see before deciding for a particular physical arrangement of the community or area (Connors, n.d.). This is the very reason why there are strict guiding principles that policy makers and community planners follow in order to achieve a successful community plan. There are various approaches of planning the ‘arrangement’ of the community. Some of possible arrangements are: 1. Zoning and separating the industrialized area from the residential area. This ‘approach’ goal is to set an area for business establishments and another for the residential houses. There are businesses which would require bigger space or would be needing waste disposal areas which when smelled by children could be harmful. Zoning is the usual approach used by any government to effectively any efficiently uphold the land use policy. Ideally, zoning is set to separate industrial, commercial and residential functions, thereby controlling the form and density of any new land development. However, zoning is also seen to be an approach used in community development to provide a line that would divide people with varied income and race background. Thus, zoning per se is believed to be causing the segregation even if its actual plan is not focused on that. This is because the codes of conduct under the principles of zoning reinforce segregation patterns that are created by discrimination in real estate (Angotti, 2004). Another method of zoning that is believed to be reinforcing residential segregation is the approach that allows most of the harmful, polluting infrastructure to be located only in the city's dwindling number of manufacturing districts. It should be noted that the number of people who are living in such areas are inexplicably the people with modest incomes and people of different skin color (Angotti, 2004). Best examples for these are the new Brooklyn that is established in New York. Unintentionally, the white men were able to talk to the policymakers into choosing a different area to be zoned, rather than where the white men were living so that they would not need to relocate. And the policymakers actually approved such request. However when the black-stricken residential area did the same request about the zoning plan, they were declined for the reason that such zoning plan should be strictly implemented and they have no room to evaluate or redesign a plan. 2. Another possible approach is separating the agricultural lands. These agricultural lands will be used for growing plants, raising animals or combined. 3. The third possible approach is segregating the residential lands based on racial differences of the residents. Assigning areas for the migrants and the natural residents is the common way of doing this. The above stated ways of community development are just three among the many ways that can be used as basis to arrange and re arrange a community. There are different aspects to consider in the physical planning of community development. Physical Community development as a Way of Residential Segregation Residential segregation is already happening, particularly the division of difference in economic status. This happens deliberately or not. However, that is not the real purpose of community development. Community development is designed to evaluate and organize a community in a way that every member would benefit from it. Needless to say its advantage is aimed for the people who will be residing in and out of the community. Yes, it can be inferred that, in many ways than one, community development enhances residential segregation. The areas for industrialized business are separated from the areas of agricultural ones. Urban is differentiated from rural. Residential houses are far from offices and building establishments. These are the most common arrangements that we now in the community and these are enough proofs that residential segregation is really at its peak. However, the other, or the negative side of residential segregation – the socio-economic variation of housing arrangement – cannot be attributed as a result of community development alone. The designs surely did not specifically state that only rich people can live in an area or the poor ones should be living in a particular area only. This segregation based on socio-economic income of the family is the result, not of the design, but of the choices made by the users, the family, itself. Social Stratification as part of Community development Social stratification, as the term implies, is the arrangement according to certain class, strata, and/or even race. It was Marx and Weber (Calderia, 1996) who first institutionalized the concept of class and status thus establishing the idea of social stratification. In today’s time, social stratification exist in a way that in a certain society or community, people are normally grouped together according to race or social status. Intentionally or not, people of same race and ethnical background tend to stay together. In the same manner, people of the same social status – like upper class or the rich versus the lower class or the poor – grouped together (Calderia, 1996). Because of the idea of social stratification, the concept of racism and/or social discrimination was also raised. People of different ethnic background will tend to organize together, share the same values and perceptions which are normally opposed to what others have. This can be both beneficial and affective for the society as a whole. In the same manner, the grouping of people of varied social status or class offer both negative and positive implications in the society. The impact depends on how the people view the arrangement according to social class (Calderia, 1996). Some, who are being grouped to the lower class, may take it as a challenge to aim higher and work harder, and some take it as a form of downgrading thus result to a negative attitude about it. Culture as an Integral Part of Community development “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action”( Li & Karakowsky (2001) The statement above just summed up what culture truly means. It should be recognized that culture is in the last analysis a set of assumptions, often unconsciously held, about people and how they relate to one another. The assumptions of modern culture can be described under five headings: individualism, self interest, the privileging of "rationality," unlimited wants, and the rise of the moral and legal claims of the nation-state on the individual (Jaspers, 1997). Individualism is the notion that society can and should be understood as a collection of autonomous individuals, that groups - with the exception of the nation-state - have no normative significance as groups; that all behavior, policy, and even ethical judgment should be reduced to their effects on individuals. All individuals play the game of life on equal terms, even if they start with different amounts of physical strength, intellectual capacity, or capital assets. The playing field is level even if the players are not equal. These individuals are taken as given in many important ways rather than as works in progress. For example, preferences are accepted as given and cover everything from views about the relative merits of different flavors of ice cream to views about the relative merits of prostitution, casual sex, sex among friends, and sex within committed relationships. In an excess of democratic zeal, the children of the 20th century have extended the notion of radical subjectivism to the whole domain of preferences: one set of "preferences" is as good as another (Jaspers, 1997). Self-interest, on the other hand, is the idea that individuals make choices to further their own benefit. There is no room here for duty, right, or obligation, and that is a good thing, too. Adam Smith's best remembered contribution to economics, for better or worse, is the idea of a harmony that materializes from the pursuit of self-interest. It should be noted that while individualism is a prior condition for self-interest - there is no place for self-interest without the self. Individualism does not necessarily imply self-interest (Jaspers, 1997). The third assumption is that one kind of knowledge is superior to others. The modern West privileges the algorithmic over the experiential, elevating knowledge that can be logically deduced from what are regarded as self-evident first principles over what is learned from intuition and authority, from touch and feel. In the stronger form of this ideology, the algorithmic is not only privileged but recognized as the sole rightful form of knowledge. Other knowledge is mere belief, becoming legitimate only when verified by algorithmic methods (Jaspers, 1997). Fourth is unlimited wants. It is human nature that we always want more than we have and that there is, consequently, never enough. The possibilities of abundance are always one step beyond our reach. Despite the enormous growth in production and consumption, we are as much in thrall to the economy as our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Most US families find one income insufficient for their needs, not only at the bottom of the distribution -where falling real wages have eroded the standard of living over the past 25 years-but also in the middle and upper ranges of the distribution (Jaspers, 1997). Finally, is the assumption that the nation-state is the pre-eminent social grouping and moral authority. The best example for this is what had just happened with the modern Europe. Worn out by fratricidal wars of religion, early modern Europe moved firmly in the direction of making one's relationship to God a private matter - a taste or inclination among many. Language, shared commitments, and a defined territory would, it was hoped, be a less discordant basis for social identity than religion had proven to be (Jaspers, 1997). Culture and Community Development Culture always plays a detrimental role in development, more particularly in community development. It is very true. No matter how we define or conceptualize the process of development that needs to take place, the very culture of the society and/or of the people must always be taken into consideration (Kenny, 1996). There is surely no need to reintroduce the culture. It also doesn’t need to be redefined. It is what it is. Whatever has been posed as the old or new culture should be accepted. The best thing to do is to actually design the process of development according to the culture that has already been there. The process will then involve looking over to and for the people and the society. What they want, what they need, what is good for them and what is not. These are the sorts of things that should be given due consideration as these are things that will ultimately define development. Hence, “we need not abandon the notion of development, so much as to attempt to redefine it radically, to create a new lexicon for talking about and witnessing the inequalities and distortions of the contemporary world order and of most, if not all, of the individual societies that comprise it” (Korten 1999). There are actually two dominant ideas that can be presented when talking of culture and the development. The first is that there should be mechanisms for local communities to decide which innovations in organization and technology are attuned with the core values the community wishes to preserve. This does not mean the blind preservation of whatever has been sanctioned by time and the existing distribution of power. Nor does it mean a tranquil, conflict-free path to the future (Kenny, 2006). The second is for practitioners and theorists of development. What many Westerners and other groups for that matter see simply as liberating people from superstition, ignorance, and the coercion of tradition, is fostering values, behaviors, and beliefs that are highly challenging for our own culture. Only haughtiness and a supreme failure of the imagination cause us to see them as universal rather than as the product of a particular history. But this does not mean arguing with the old adage "anything goes", instead this should be considered as a call for sensitivity, for entering into a conversation that involves listening instead of dictating - not so that we can better implement our own agenda, but so that we can genuinely learn that which modernity has made us forget (Smith, 2000). Indeed, the overall concept of culture and community development is a long battle itself. However, by just looking closely as to what development really means, it will always point out to one basic question: Why is it needed and who should be benefitted from it? The answer is very simple - the society calls for it and its very goal is to provide adequate housing for the increasing number of population thereby benefitting more people. Thus, there should be no more arguments as to whether culture and development is interrelated, because it really is. Culture has an important place in development as development creates a very big impact for the culture. This only means that development cooperation should focus more on what people really want instead of just imposing them western views of how they should develop. Generalization Physical community development enhances residential segregation, intentionally or not. However, it must be noted that the effect of such community development is not always negative, like racial segregation and/socioeconomic segregation. Safety and maximizing resources are always the main concern of redesigning the community. It just so happen that racial and socio-economic segregation has always been the aftermath of residential segregation in community development. References: Angotti, Tom. 2004. “Residential Segregation” [online] Alexander, Christopher, et al. 1987. A New Theory of Urban Design. New York: Oxford University Press Caldeira, T. (1996). Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation. Public Culture 8, 303-328. Clarke, J. and Langan, M. (1993) ‘Restructuring Welfare:The British Welfare Regime in the 1980s.’ in Cochrane, A. and Clarke, J. eds. Comparing Welfare States:Britain in International Context. Sage and The Open University, pp. 49–74. Connors, Phil. Community Development and the State. Deakin University. Costonis, John J. 1989. Icons and Aliens: Law, Aesthetics, and Environmental Change. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Friedman, J. (1996) Cultural Identity and Global Process , Sage, London. Greene, S. 1982. Evaluation and Prescription in Community Design: Western Plaza: A Case Study. Master's thesis, Department of Art, The George Washington University, Washington, DC. Jaspers, J. M. (1997) The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography and Creativity in Social Movements , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Kenny, S. (1996) ‘Contestations of community development in Australia’ in Community Development Journal. Vol 31, No. 2. pp. 104 –113. Kenny, S. (2006) Developing Communities for the Future. 3rd ed, Thomson, South Melbourne. Korten, D. S. (1999) The Post-Corporate World , Alken, Singapore; Kumarian Press, New York. Li & Karakowsky (2001). Do We See Eye-to-Eye? Implications of Cultural Differences for Cross-Cultural Management Research and Practice. The Journal of Psychology, 135(5), 501-517. Smith, M. J. (2000) Culture: Reinventing the Social Sciences , Open University Press, Buckingham. Starr, A. (2000) Naming the Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements Confront Globalization , Zed Books, London. Read More