Subscribe to this blog 
The Soul of the Community — Community-Citizen Engagement
February 10th, 2009 by Mike Knutson
Economic development professionals often focus solely on job development. The more jobs created the greater likelihood the community as a whole will judge their job performance a success. A study of 26 communities by the Knight Foundation, however, suggests that economic growth is linked to residents’ loyalty, emotional attachment and engagement to a community. This suggests that how people feel about their community should be a measure of an economic development professional’s job performance.
Funded by the John S. and John L. Knight Foundation and conducted by Gallup Inc., the study measured residents’ emotional connection to their community and found a direct correlation to the community’s gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, the greater the attachment people have towards their community, the greater the community’s economic growth (as measured by GDP).
The following video offers a brief summary.
While I definitely believe the Knight Foundation is onto something big, I want to caution that so far they’ve only shown a correlation between community engagement and GDP. Over the next two years, they intend to “analyze the trends to prove whether emotional connection drives economic growth, or the other way around”(from foundation’s press release ”How much do you love where you live?”).
I’d also like to be clear that community and economic development professionals can’t neglect job creation strategies altogether. Job development and community engagement need to go hand-in-hand.
The Knight Foundation has published the results of this study on a website titled “The Soul of the Community.” I intend to dig into the research further and will report back. Until then, I’ve summarized a few of the studies main points, which were highlighted in the foundation’s press release.
Other Key Points of the study
- A significant correlation exists between the emotional connections that residents have towards their community and the community’s Gross Domestic Product growth.
- Three factors are most significant in impacting how residents feel about their community including:
- Social Offerings — What is there to do and where can people meet? (sounds like a case for the importance of “third places“)
- Openness – How open is the community to newcomers and diversity? (sounds like what we were talking about here)
- Community Aesthetics – natural surroundings like mountains, lakes, streams and natural green places within the community (more on the importance of natural amentities here)
- Of the above factors, Social Offerings is most important.
- Residents don’t become engaged in a community overnight. It generally takes 3-6 years.
- Communities can help increase the emotional attachment of its residents by helping them meet and get to know other people in the community.
- Each community is different, thus the importance of each of the above factors varies in communities.
Tags: community-citizen engagement, economic development professional, job creation, Knight Foundation, loyalty, social offerings, third places
Posted in Community Development, Community Engagement, Economic Development, In the News, Quality of Life, Rural | Comments (
1 )
February 16th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Providing Social Offerings and answering “what is there to do?” are, indeed, vital steps in creating community engagement. For newcomers, stepping up as community project leaders, or bringing their own pet projects to fruition, are the very best things that they can do. Small communities will always trump bigger ones when it comes to potential for individuals to make a difference. I write community profiles for South Dakota Magazine and other publications. Sometimes a small town newcomer tells me, “I had no idea the city (or chamber of commerce or school board) would endorse my idea and tell me to run with it! That would never happen where I came from.” When I hear that, I know that person is most likely engaged locally for the long term. A word of caution, though. People moving in from larger communities often don’t know that “instant leadership” is possible anywhere, and they don’t know the steps to take to gain that leadership (even when the steps are as simple as showing up and raising a hand at a city council meeting). There’s an ugly stereotype of the transplanted urbanite retiring to a small town and deciding he or she should run things in a way that conforms to city expectations. In fact, more often in my experience, those people come from environments where they never had a chance to run anything. Someone has to show them what they can do in their new home. And yes, I do believe healthy rural communities will attract newcomers from cities.