Creating a Community By Design always makes sense when you start out any building project.  But what about when the community is all ready in place.  All the infrastructure, systems and people have been operating for years under an approach that once made total sense. 

However, now we find that some things just aren't serving the community like we envisoned.  We have many people who are not engaged--either due to poverty or simply being disenfranchised--they have no way to be a part of the community--no way to make a contribution--to feel valued and able to make a difference.

We find many of our communities like this.  Places where things just don't work as well as they could if we were able to start over.  As the community evolved--plans, practices and policies--even people began to get in the way of each other.  Rather than address the obvious, we just found ways to work around it all.  It appeared much easier than trying to put our arms around the issues.  It looked much bigger than all of us.

There is a will to improve--in fact, you find many community leaders, government officials and service organizations that have been striving for years to make things right.  Again, they find that the existing systems are very enduring and secure--as they should be.  No one wants to have things designed so they fall apart.  However, very few system designs were structured to be dynamic and evolve as most of our communities typically do.

So what's to be done about it?  We believe it must be based on a new redesign effort--what we refer to as Community By Design.