Drivers of Positive Community Development

Drivers of Positive Community Development:

1. Positive Psychology 

Positive Psychology emerged at the beginning of the new millennium as a movement within psychology aimed at enhancing human strengths such as creativity, joy, flow, responsibility, and optimal performance and achievement. Most study of human behavior has focused mainly on what goes wrong in human affairs: aggression, mental disease, failure, and so on. While it is essential to study and contain such pathologies, it is equally important to understand those aspects of human experience that make life worth living.

2. Positive Connectedness 

Friendship, bonding social capital, bridging social capital, etc.
3. Philanthropy

“A philanthropist is anyone who gives anything - time, money, experience, skills, and networks - in any amount, to create a better world.”

~Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, author of Giving 2.0

Philanthropists can increase their impact by identifying, broadening, and building their unique strengths and those of the communities they interact with to create positive environments where people can flourish.

4. Positive Health

Positive health describes a state beyond the mere absence of disease and is definable and measurable. Positive health can be operationalised by a combination of excellent status on biological,subjective, and functional measures.

5. Positive Education

Positive education is defined as education for both traditional skills and for happiness.
Video: Positive Education with Character Strengths

"Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one."
~Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

6. Art, Sport, & Culture

Visual Art, Sports, Theater, Film, Music, Dance, Performance Art, Storytelling

7. Positive Media & Journalism

National Advisor: Meghan Keener - Positive Psychology Expert specializing in Positive Media.

Journalism, newspapers, television, internet, media, social media, advertising, internet, public relations

"Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed."
~James W. Carey, Journalism Instructor at Columbia University, died in 2006
 
"...the work done in media industries is a fundamental aspect of contemporary experiences – intellectual, emotional, political, spiritual."
~Horace Newcomb, Director of the Peabody Awards

8. Economic Development 

The process and policies by which a nation improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people. Fostering innovation and entrepreneurship which results in the creation of new businesses or the expansion of existing businesses. Building the cultural life of a community is a good in itself, but it also helps in cases where when all other relocation or start up factors are considered, a business will want to choose your community.

Ideas for exploration:

Shared Value:
"...shared value (video clip 1)... involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Shared value (video clip 2) is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success."

Coworking:
We  see great potential for coworking to foster both economic development and positive social connectedness. "Coworking is a style of work that involves a shared working environment, sometimes an office, yet independent activity. Unlike in a typical office environment, those coworking are usually not employed by the same organization."
~Coworking Wikipedia Entry

Positive Technology Advisor: Zack Prager, Joy Dose & Gratitude Bucket


9.  Placemaking

National Advisor: Katherine Loflin - Principal at Loflin Consulting Solutions

"Placemaking is when you put place central to all your decisions, all of your thinking. It doesn't mean you stop growing and you stop becoming, but its that you never lose sight of where you live and the space that you share and how much it matters."

~Katherine Loflin host of Place Matters

"...quality of place creates human capital, and human capital generates economic activity and revitalization."
~Dennis Scholl on Place Matters

Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Put simply, it involves looking at, listening to, and asking questions of the people who live, work and play in a particular space, to discover their needs and aspirations. This information is then used to create a common vision for that place. The vision can evolve quickly into an implementation strategy, beginning with small-scale, do-able improvements that can immediately bring benefits to public spaces and the people who use them.

Actions:

1. Identify the top ten public spaces (streets, bars, coffee shops, parks, etc.) in your neighborhood that draw people together and ten great things (reasons to be there, things to do, things to see, etc.) about each place.
2. Bring your strengths, drivers, and your neighborhood together to better your top ten public places.

10. Environment
Nature experiences, gardening, parks, etc.

11. Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods (walkable, about the size of an area that feeds into an elementary school) and neighborhood partnerships (bikable, an area the size of the neighborhoods that feed into a  high school) are ends in themselves, and they are also living laboratories to discover what works well. Each neighborhood partnership will have an advisory council and each city will have a central advisory council with members that are each deeply connected to one or more of the ten drivers of positive community development.


Is your neighborhood moving in the right direction?
Answer these simple YES/NO questions to find out.

1. Is the neighborhood cleaner?
2. Does the neighborhood feel safer?
3. Is the neighborhood more attractive?
4. Are there fewer vacancies?
5. Are there more people on the sidewalks?
6. Is there a popular new outdoor gathering place?
7. Is there a popular new indoor gathering place?
8. Is there new evidence of arts activity?
9. Has the local press reported on it positively?
10. Do people in the neighborhood generally agree that the neighborhood is getting better?


 12. Leadership/ Followership Development

"Leadership focuses on building alignment through inspiring visions. Leadership provides direction. The key is that leaders listen, and cobble together a vision from lots of people."
 ~Dave Logan

Leadership and Followership: What Tango Teaches Us About These Roles in Life
~Ira Chaleff

13. Play
National Advisor on Play: Emily Nash - Education Department Manager at Lincoln Children's Museum

Links to the Posts of Positivity Matters:
Positivity Matters: Main Entry
Calendar
Positivity Matters - Lincoln
Happiness Lincoln 2014
Positivity Matters Around the World  
Drivers of Positive Community Development
10 Great Places of Lincoln x 10 Great Things to Do at Each