community
Imagine a city where every citizen enjoyed public amenities of choice, engaged actively in the decisions affecting their community, shaped their community with their citizenship and volunteer commitments, and shared public space joyfully with others.
How can citizens’ attachment to their community be solidified by their ability to engage in a robust public life? What would that vision look like for cities throughout the country and what can we do now to realize it?
Community events.
The Community Challenge
On November 10-11, 2010, experts from the fields of citizen engagement, public policy activism, volunteerism, technology, government and citizen-led civic production came together in Detroit for the Community Challenge. Over 36 hours, they shared knowledge to advance a new understanding of what a contemporary robust public life looks like, what attracts people to it, what it ought to deliver (its purpose and its value to individuals and to communities), how it should be evaluated and how we get more of it.
Because attachment to community underpins the rationale for participation in public life, the framing of the dialogue reflected the primary drivers of community attachment identified by the Knight Foundation Soul of the Community poll—social offerings, openness and aesthetics. In short, robust public life is the bridge between individuals and their community, and between communities and the institutions that serve them. Robust public life provides the means for sustaining ongoing social innovation and change. Through robust public life, we can mobilize the resources and relationships needed to make life in cities better for everyone.
Participants developed a set of big ideas to foster a robust public life that increase attachment by amplifying community attachment drivers. These ideas will be used to inform demonstration projects that drive community attachment over the next 18-36 months. Both the Community Challenge and the demonstration projects have been made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Questions? Contact Julia Klaiber at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 202-525-5627.
