Share Stories about Your Community Development and Organizing

This page is for the few real storytellers among us.

It's a place for the secret writer, the highly experienced activist, or the newly retired and bored to tell us what has happened directly to them, or what they know has happened to others, as they have engaged in community development, housing projects, economic development, community improvement and beautification, community organizing, city planning, zoning, homeowners association adventures, or land use litigation.

If you're not usually a storyteller, maybe a long winter evening or lazy summer vacation day will inspire you.

Just last week I heard a story about how a couple of real estate developers had put together a large group of investors to renovate a downtown office building into a creative mix of uses. Everything was going very well until the city government stepped in, seemingly devising new obstacles, requirements, and procedures that must be met at every step of the way.

The particulars of that story would be meaningful not only in the U.S. city where it occurred, but also in many other cities where governments similarly have stifled great development opportunities.

In community development, imitation is very common, but it's the response when there is a new twist in the plot that would help others to understand this field.

In working with older parts of cities especially, there's always something unexpected, such as finding an old cemetery, discovering that the sewer line isn't where the as-built plans showed it to be, finding a tribal burial ground in someone's back yard, or unearthing a long-forgotten tunnel or passageway between buildings that had been covered over.

This page is for longer-form stories about such happenings, rather than the little snippets most people will take the time to write.

Before the form, let's make sure you're going to tell your story in the optimum place on our site. We've split up the visitor-contributed content into several strands.

So use this link if you want to ask a question, and if you want to contribute to specialized topics, you can see that list by returning to community development ideas page.

Otherwise, please use the form below to share stories with people interested in community development all across the globe. What you write may be edited, and occasionally the editors will step in and make a comment. We allow only truly worthwhile comments to be displayed with your story.

Have An Interesting Experience to Tell Us About?

Have you experienced or witnessed a lesson or a remarkable turn of events related to community and economic development, or the other topics on this site? This is the place to spin a yarn, tell a tale, and let it all flow out. There's a word limit, but most of your won't reach it, so let the storytelling begin.

What Other Visitors Have Said

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page.

To make private comments to us, use our general Contact Us form.

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