The Connected Community: Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighborhoods

Find out how to uncover the hidden talents, assets, and abilities in your neighborhood and bring them together to create a vibrant and joyful community. It takes a village!

We may be living longer, but people are more socially isolated than ever before. As a result, we are hindered both mentally and physically, and many of us are looking for something concrete we can do to address problems like poverty, racism, and climate change. What if solutions could be found on your very doorstep or just two door knocks away?
 
Cormac Russell is a veteran practitioner of asset-based community development (ABCD), which focuses on uncovering and leveraging the hidden resources, skills, and experience in our neighborhoods. He and John McKnight, the cooriginator of ABCD, show how anyone can discover this untapped potential and connect with his or her neighbors to create healthier, safer, greener, more prosperous, and welcoming communities. They offer a wealth of illustrative examples from around the world that will inspire you to explore your own community and discover its hidden treasures.
 
You will learn to take action on what you already deeply know—that neighborliness is not just a nice-to-have personal characteristic but essential to living a fruitful life and a powerful amplifier of community change and renewal.
 

Cormac Russell is managing director of Nurture Development and a faculty member and European director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University, Chicago. He is also codirector of the new Community Renewal Centre. Russell is a popular international keynote speaker and is also the author of Rekindling Democracy.
 
John McKnight is cofounder of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and a senior associate of the Kettering Foundation. McKnight cofounded the Health & Medicine Policy Research Group with Dr. Quentin Young, cofounded the Gamaliel Foundation with Greg Galluzzo, and was a founding board member of National People’s Action led by Gale Cincotta.