Telling Our Story—A Community-Based Meso-Level Approach to Sustainable Community Development

Sabine O’Hara (), Golnar Ahmadi, Midas Hampton and Konyka Dunson
Additional contact information
Sabine O’Hara: College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES), University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC 20008, USA
Golnar Ahmadi: College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES), University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC 20008, USA
Midas Hampton: Strategic Spartanburg, Spartanburg, SC 29302, USA
Konyka Dunson: College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES), University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC 20008, USA

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: Engaging diverse stakeholders in dialogue around sustainable development has proven to be a successful strategy to advance sustainable development goals. Without local engagement, sustainable development efforts can fail to accomplish their objectives. Yet, determining the best strategy for engaging diverse stakeholders can be challenging. Similarly challenging can be the transfer of information regarding successful development strategies from one community to another. Local specificity is key to finding sustainable development solutions. Yet, knowledge creation one-community-at-a-time is time consuming and limits the transferability of knowledge. Meso-level approaches are therefore essential to finding transferable solutions. The Five-Pillars approach to development is such a meso-level mixed methods approach. It identifies a manageable set of indicators in five common categories: education, health, environmental quality, social and cultural amenities, and information and transportation access. These indicator categories form the basis for selecting specific locations within a community where local stakeholders engage in writing a collective story about their sustainable development future. This article describes the implementation of the Five Pillars approach in two neighborhoods in Washington D.C. It concludes that the approach offers an effective engagement strategy that gives voice to the sustainable development vision of local stakeholders while providing a framework that can benefit diverse communities.

Keywords: sustainable community development; stakeholder engagement; participatory urban planning; mixed-methods research; meso-level methodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/5795/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/5795/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:7:p:5795-:d:1108276

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().