Week One: Community Participation

As we begin our participation in class, we are beginning to understand the dynamics of community participation. It's great to hear so many opinions and ideas about involving citizens in the development of their own communities. As each person offers his or her view, I'm reminded that there are as many or more views in a community. While I listen to every and offer my ideas, I realize that the class should be a lot like a community planning session or a charette. We should be able to presnt issues that arise in communities and be able to discuss them and come to some understanding. I'm sure as the class continues, there will be areas that we do not all agree on. However, the differences should give us a wider range of knowledge and should prepare us for working with communities that are not familiar to us. As we have discussions, listen to each other, and take the time to understand each opinion, we should also learn ways to assist groups within communities in listening to each other and developing methods of compromise.

"Walking in Another's Shoes" was an article that gave me some peace of mind about going into communities that are new to me. I appreciated the "outsider's" view and the willingness to admit that mistakes were made. It's difficult to know everything about a place and a group of people. In most cases, we can research and interview, but it may be impossible to know everything at a first meeting or planning session. It seemed that both the "professionals" and the residents were anxious to develop the community and were willing to have a dialogue about the positives and negatives.