Describes community planning as an empowering professional practice. Compares the empowerment practices of process-focused and product-focused planning. Uses stages of rational comprehensive planning and stages of community empowerment as the context. (SK)

Strategic development planning encompasses the setting of communitywide objectives; appraisal of external forces; analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; and development of a community-owned strategic plan. As an appropriate method transferred from business, it overcomes criticisms of other community participatory planning…

A survey of 26 human service agencies in an empowerment zone found the following: 73% used interns, few from social work; 57% used empowerment in mission statements (more economic than social agencies); 69% of these wanted community practice interns; and higher-budget agencies were better able to negotiate the empowerment zone system. (Contains 20…

The Sheffield (England) City Council used an advisory group approach to solicit citizen participation in community planning. Two important lessons were: ensuring that all target groups are represented and providing training and information to prepare citizen representatives for their consulting role. (SK)

A community water supply project in Cameroon illustrates the following constraints on community participation in development: paternalistic authorities, prescriptive role of the state, selective participation, bias toward "hard" issues, inattention to negative results, group conflicts, gatekeeping, pressure for immediate results,…