This book draws on preeminent planning theorist Patsy Healey's personal
experiences as a resident of a small rural town in England, to explore
what place and community mean in a particular context, and how different
initiatives struggle to get a stake in the wider governance relations
while maintaining their own focus and ways of working. Throughout the
book, Healey assesses the public value generated by community
initiatives and the impact of such activity on wider governance
dynamics.
Healey explores the power which small communities are able to mobilise
through self-organisation and grassroots activism. Through the lens of
Wooler and Glendale as a micro-society, the book centres on a community
experiencing an economic and demographic transition. It focuses on three
initiatives developed and led by local people - a small community
development trust, an informal attentionmobilising network, and a
Neighbourhood Plan project which uses an opportunity provided within the
formal planning system. It examines how, in such civil society activism,
people came together to promote local development in a place and
community neglected by the dominant political economy.
The book details the power and force of community initiative and its
potential for transforming both the future possibilities for the place
and community itself, as well as wider governance relations. Overall, it
seeks to enrich academic and policy discussion about how the relations
between formal government and civil society energy could evolve in more
productive and progressive directions.
