Building Communities
 
 

Supporting Native American Tribes and Environmental Justice

Building Communities has been active serving Native American communities since 2011. Economic development plans have been developed and implemented for Tribes in five states.

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.
 
 
 
Article - Four Resolutions All Cities Should Make
 
   
Whether you are broadly setting the direction for your community, informing a land-use plan, creating a more effective and relevant (EDA) Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), mobilizing a HUD-funded Regional Plan for Sustainable Development or any other community-based planning pursuit, the Building Communities process can be the catalyst for positive action ahead.
 

Our brand of community and economic development strategic planning is different than any other process. We know because we invented it.

Decades ago, a generic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis was the common approach. More recently, the SWOT process evolved into what has became known as Asset-based Community Development (ABCD).

Building Communities is the third generation of strategic planning for communities. We take the strengths of both older approaches to create a very fast-paced process that is immensely engaging for community leaders and volunteers.
 
 

Empowering Regional Planning with Strong, Local Roots

Regional planning is important, but can become meaningless if it is not rooted in local engagement, decisions and action. Building Communities integrates regional planning with local processes in order to maintain local priorities and actions while preserving and enhancing the benefits of regional planning. Here are our two most recent regional plans:

The fast-growing rural region of Western North Dakota

Vision West ND Regional Plan Executive Summary

The Native American Tribe-centered region of Northeast Arizona

East Arkansas Planning & Development District Strategic Plan

East Arkansas Planning & Development District Executive Summary

  
 

Get the Latest on Community and Economic Development
in Brian's New Book:

When it comes to creating jobs and improving local quality of life, some communities succeed and others fail. But why? What explains this? Many previous answers to this question have been largely subjective. In his new book—Why Some Communities SUCCEED, Why Some Fail, And What to Do About It—Brian offers a clearly objective analysis of these questions... read more

 

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