Subscribe to this blog 
Posts Tagged ‘economic development professional’
The Soul of the Community — Community-Citizen Engagement
February 10th, 2009
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)