Creating Better Communities

Designing Healthy Communities, the companion book to the acclaimed public television documentary, highlights how we design the built environment and its potential for addressing and preventing many of the nation's devastating childhood and adult health concerns. Dr. Richard Jackson looks at the root causes of our malaise and highlights healthy community designs achieved by planners, designers, and community leaders working together. Ultimately, Dr. Jackson encourages all of us to make the kinds of positive changes highlighted in this book. 2012 Nautilus Silver Award Winning Title in category of “Social Change” "In this book Dr. Jackson inhabits the frontier between public health and urban planning, offering us hopeful examples of innovative transformation, and ends with a prescription for individual action. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about how we shape the communities and the world that shapes us." —Will Rogers, president and CEO, The Trust for Public Land "While debates continue over how to design cities to promote public health, this book highlights the profound health challenges that face urban residents and the ways in which certain aspects of the built environment are implicated in their etiology. Jackson then offers up a set of compelling cases showing how local activists are working to fight obesity, limit pollution exposure, reduce auto-dependence, rebuild economies, and promote community and sustainability. Every city planner and urban designer should read these cases and use them to inform their everyday practice." —Jennifer Wolch, dean, College of Environmental Design, William W. Wurster Professor, City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley "Dr. Jackson has written a thoughtful text that illustrates how and why building healthy communities is the right prescription for America." —Georges C. Benjamin, MD, executive director, American Public Health Association Publisher Companion Web site: www.josseybass.com/go/jackson Additional media and content: http://dhc.mediapolicycenter.org/

The author's work has shaped a generation of planners, designers, and landscape architects. In this book, the author brings his insights to a broader public, with a profusely illustrated demonstration of how local officials, planning commissioners, and everyday citizens can work to make their communities more attractive, more habitable, and more sustainable. Despite the widespread acceptance of good design and planning principles throughout the professions, too many of our towns and rural areas remain needlessly ugly and inefficient. In side by side comparisons of similar places and kinds of buildings, the author shows that we need not live amid sprawling, characterless visual blight. Simple design choices and effective municipal decisions can have tremendous impacts on the quality of our communities. Written in the author's well-known clear, accessible, nontechnical style, this book creates a sense of hope for those who face the everyday challenges of working with developers and landowners to create places that make economic, environmental, and aesthetic sense. The author shows us that with diligence, thoughtfulness, and care, we can make our communities better in countless ways.

"The best study so far about the virtual collapse in the late twentieth century of South Jersey's largest city."--New York Times.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Connecting with other people, finding a sense of belonging and the need for support are natural human desires. Employees who don't feel supported at work don't stay around for long - or if they do, they quickly become unmotivated and unhappy. At a time when organisational structures are flattening and workforces are increasingly fluid, supporting and connecting people is more important than ever. This is where organisational communities of practice come in. Communities of practice have many valuable benefits. They include accelerating professional development; breaking down organisational silos; enabling knowledge sharing and management; building better practice; helping to hire and retain staff; and making people happier. In this book, Emily Webber shares her learning from personal experiences of building successful communities of practice within organisations. And along the way, she gives practical guidance on creating your own.

A practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community, online or IRL. Although communities feel magical, they don’t come together by magic. Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K–12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them. In Get Together, Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto of People & Company share true stories of everyday people who have created thriving communities, both in person and online. They provide clear steps to untangle the challenge of getting passionate people together, helping individuals and organizations navigate the intricacies of leading a community, including: - How to rally the first people - How to get people talking - How to attract new, authentic folks - How to develop leaders and expand globally. The People & Company team reminds us that we each hold the potential to spark a community. Get Together shows readers that if we join forces—as company and customers, artist and fans, organizer and advocates—we’ll do more together than we ever could alone.

The field of Affordable Housing and Community Economic Development in the United States has evolved since the 1960s. It has become a solid and complex industry. Building Healthy Communities: A Guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers and Policymakers documents the themes and trends of the contemporary CED movement and provides guidance for strengthening our communities and ensuring that they and their residents prosper in today's global economy.

Resolving Tough Community Problems with Teamwork The first resource that shows how key players from local governments, businesses, health care organizations, school boards, churches, and police departments can be turned into a team, working together to improve their communities. The editors have gathered the accumulated wisdom of top consultants and practitioners and share the experiences and accomplishments of these experts who have worked in over fifty community partnerships across North America. A useful, hands-on tool, this workbook contains a wealth of resources--including worksheets, guidelines, overhead slides, and case studies--designed to help every community implement a workable plan of action. It takes you through the Seven Core Processes, a synthesis of interrelated activities and events in which all collaborative efforts engage. Will help communities * Gain insight into the collaborative process * Jump-start community efforts with new strategies and initiatives * Understand and work through the action steps of each Core Process * Craft more effective partnerships * Create healthier and safer places to live

An authentic brand community is more than just people buying your product or working alongside one another. This book articulates the critical roles of mutual concern, common values, and shared experiences in creating fiercely loyal customer and collaborator relationships. Smart organizations know that creating communities is the key to unlocking unprecedented outcomes. But too many mistakenly rely on superficial transactional relationships as a foundation for community, when really people want something deeper. Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl argue that in an authentic and enriching community, members have mutual concern for one another, share personal values, and join together in meaningful shared experiences, whether online or off. On the deepest level, brands must help members grow into who they want to be. Jones and Vogl present practices used by global brands like Yelp, Etsy, Twitch, Harley Davidson, Salesforce, Airbnb, Sephora, and others to connect in a meaningful way with the people critical for their success. They articulate how authentic communities can serve organizational goals in seven different areas: innovation, talent recruitment, customer retention, marketing, customer service, building transformational movements, and creating community forums. They also reveal principles to grow a new brand community to critical mass. This is the first comprehensive guide to a crucial differentiator that gives organizations access to untapped enthusiasm and engagement.

How insights from the social sciences, including social psychology and economics, can improve the design of online communities. Online communities are among the most popular destinations on the Internet, but not all online communities are equally successful. For every flourishing Facebook, there is a moribund Friendster—not to mention the scores of smaller social networking sites that never attracted enough members to be viable. This book offers lessons from theory and empirical research in the social sciences that can help improve the design of online communities. The authors draw on the literature in psychology, economics, and other social sciences, as well as their own research, translating general findings into useful design claims. They explain, for example, how to encourage information contributions based on the theory of public goods, and how to build members' commitment based on theories of interpersonal bond formation. For each design claim, they offer supporting evidence from theory, experiments, or observational studies.