IPR Publications, Mapping Community Capacity

Mapping Community Capacity

by John L. McKnight and John Kretzmann

Hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs have either disappeared or moved away from the central city and its neighborhoods. And while many downtown areas have experienced a "renaissance," the jobs created there are different from those that once sustained neighborhoods. Either these new jobs are highly professionalized, and require elaborate education and credentials for entry, or they are routine, low-paying service jobs without much of a future. In effect, these changes have removed the bottom rung from the fabled American "ladder of opportunity." For many people in older city neighborhoods, new approaches to rebuilding their lives and communities, new openings toward opportunity, are a vital necessity.

Mapping Community Capacity offers a blueprint for regenerating low-income urban neighborhoods in the absence of large new infusions of federal money or private reindustrialization. It identifies resources within the community that can be tapped for internal development. Chief among these "building blocks" are residents, schools, associations, public institutions and services, welfare payments, and information.

To help elicit information on the skills and abilities of residents that can be utilized in community building, this policy guide features a 13-page questionnaire, a "Capacity Inventory." It also contains an "Associational Map" that lists typical community organizations -- from service clubs to gardening groups -- around which these new activities can develop.

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