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A community based mapping system for community empowerment regarding health issues. Related blog post  http://bit.ly/r0yfiH Related wiki post http://bit.ly/ptUxVz

An explanation on vimeo on how the Healthy City program works for San Francisco. Related blog post  http://bit.ly/r0yfiH Related wiki post http://bit.ly/ptUxVz 

This video helps to explain the HealthyCity program. Related blog post http://bit.ly/r0yfiH Related wiki post http://bit.ly/ptUxVz 

Economics and creating livable cities notes and comments on the video. Related blog post http://bit.ly/qXggrn    related wiki post http://bit.ly/nKYXWt 

The future of communities promises to be austere with less public funding available.  This means other means need to be used to create new community paradigms but the challenge is that any major change must take hold in the first 6 months or the existing organizational culture will put the brakes on the effort in self survival.

Major efforts also take 3 requirements. Leadership, Vision and Funding. I suspect for community paradigms the most important is Vision around which Leadership can be organized around to attain funding. One important focus for the community as a whole will be job creation.

These efforts need to work with outside usually private agencies and finding avenues of mutual benefit.  Having a cooperative government entity to work though can therefore be a plus.

Universities are changing their role in the working with communities.  They can be great resources without necessarily trying to establish political control. Students are also a great resource for community change. Different disciplines design, technology and business can be brought together to help create innovative ideas. They can, as should community paradigm organizations, challenge the status quo. At the same time there is a necessity for structure. The question is how to community paradigm groups achieve structure?

In creating community paradigms outcomes are as important as outputs.  Outputs is the metric by which an effort is judged and usually quantitative but outcomes are the changes to the community that come from implementing the effort. You leave behind something sustainable in new partnerships, new ways of working, new ideas.

The challenge is working with experts for innovative ideas without being snare by ideas that are politically or economically motivated to give another advantage or because they are expedient.

The very idea of endeavoring to bring about new community paradigms means creating an environment with more social capital from which to draw to achieve the desired shift in community paradigm requires a good deal of volunteering where the participants actively pursue their role as producers of democracy. Volunteering is not limited to formal volunteering but all altruistic forms of social interaction. It helps to increase democratic participation. Robert Putnam's work demonstrates that it also has positive economic benefit as well. See wiki page for more info. There does however need to be something more to the effort of creating a new community paradigm beyond volunteering. What that is not clear but it seems to rise out of the act of creating a viable community paradigm shift.

Danger of disconnect brought about by austerity measures cutting people of from the community. Thousand flowers wll bloom without government theory is without merit

Communities should do more than provide shelter they should provide opportunities and fundamentally economic opportunities. 

Need a more holistic view, local competency, asking private sector to work in totally different way from traditional way but business still wants government to get out of the way. 

Government can be overly reactive going for the flavor of the minute.

What is the relationship of virtual communities to real communities through the enabling of programs such as car sharing.  Can it reinforce the connections of communities?

Volunteering at its best is a face to face proposition

Liveable is not merely a means of economic advantage but also must include other factors including environmental. We seek what cities give us culturally and aesthetically 

This part of the discussion mirrors the work of Soul of the Community blog post http://bit.ly/qfZtt2 wiki post http://bit.ly/mXp0sF

Defines what WHO considers to be the factors found in a Healthy City. Related blog post http://bit.ly/r0yfiH Related wiki post http://bit.ly/ptUxVz