We still come home after our day jobs and work hard to make the communities where we live more attractive, functional, and prosperous.

Our whole goal is to publish reliable, condensed, and introductory information with a definite point of view and sense of humor.

We hope our community improvement tips and concepts will be practical for people who suddenly find themselves appointed or elected to a planning commission, board of adjustment, town council, neighborhood association board, or water district council, as examples.

Based on experience and research, and no agenda except a strong ethic of telling you what works, we'll talk about improving your cities, towns, suburbs, planned communities, and rural areas.

We also hope to help activists, neighborhood associations, curious citizens, and people who want to advance democracy. We like the idea that new activists might learn how to write petitions or fight city hall right here.

Based on our many years in consulting and government, we sort through the huge volume of information to give you the major points you need to know as quickly and painlessly as possible. We love what we do, whether it's helping you organize economic development or community beautification projects.

We get right to the point in lampooning the silliest things that are recommended to mayors and small town chambers of commerce in the name of community economic development.

We're not interested in repeating theories about city planning or urban development, but we do try to explain the jargon that professionals use so you can apply your common sense to the advice you receive.

We're conversational, candid, and chatty in sharing our experience and research.

Our Favorite Community Improvement Topics

So please explore the site. Use the navigation buttons or check out our descriptions below.

Some of you will need to start with our very broad definition of community development, which perhaps you associate more narrowly with just housing policy.

If you want comparatively simple community projects, you could begin with some community beautification. Perhaps you already have community organizations, and simply want to make them more effective. We have ideas on that! You'll need to encourage a culture of volunteerism.

These days almost everyone is concerned about some form of economic development. Recessions increase the need to work on crime prevention too.

Sooner or later you'll benefit from sound, but not extravagant city planning, which many people associate with land use zoning. We try to simplify these complex topics, while explaining where code enforcement fits in.

You might want to know about us, as they say in Internet-land, or you might want to even contact us. If you browse through the pages, you'll see we have use affiliate sponsorship to help you buy important books.

To contribute or even to argue back (we haven't had much of that yet--we would welcome it), you can add to the community development ideas or ask a community development question.

And to see what's new at any given time, go on over to the so-called community development blog, which is more like a running tally of what we've all said.

Last and importantly, we've included a group of pages about environmental sustainability because many neighborhood associations and city governments are talking about how to apply these ideas locally. Chief among worthwhile sustainability strategies may be containing suburban sprawl and encouraging redevelopment.

Let's get going. If you're the thorough type, you can review the sitemap.