Handbook of Quality of Life and Sustainability, Socio-spatial and Multidisciplinary Perspectives.

MARTINEZ, J; MIKKELSEN, C; PHILLIPS, R

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2020 p. 550

978-3-030-50539-4

Fundamentally, research is the process of discovery and exploration the outcomes ofwhich range widely from increasing understanding and finding potential solutions togathering information that may contribute to additional inquiry. Community development as a means of improving the places we live is a pressing issue more than ever, andfurther discovery and exploration of it is very much needed. It is our intent to presentthis volume to spur ideas and innovations in community development. At its most basic,community development is simply about making things better for the people who livethere (Musikanski et al., 2019). At its most complex, it is decidedly difficult to identifythe most effective or desirable approach as needs, desires, conditions, external and internalinfluences and confounding factors and resources can vary widely between communities.Community represents agency and solidarity (Bhattacharyya, 1995), and it is critical tounderstand that community is not only a destination and location but can also include acommon set of ideas and values (Trevan, 2016), which inform both research and practicefor the co-creation of knowledge.By focusing on research approaches, techniques and applications, we aim to illustrateboth the broad complexity of community development and its potential. We hope thiswill help foster greater understanding of how research contributes to scholarship and topractice, where we see the results of ideas in action.