Telling Our Story—A Community-Based Meso-Level Approach to Sustainable Community Development

Abstract

Engaging diverse stakeholders in dialogue around sustainable development has proven to be a successful strategy to advance sustainable development goals. Without local engagement, sustainable development efforts can fail to accomplish their objectives. Yet, determining the best strategy for engaging diverse stakeholders can be challenging. Similarly challenging can be the transfer of information regarding successful development strategies from one community to another. Local specificity is key to finding sustainable development solutions. Yet, knowledge creation one-community-at-a-time is time consuming and limits the transferability of knowledge. Meso-level approaches are therefore essential to finding transferable solutions. The Five-Pillars approach to development is such a meso-level mixed methods approach. It identifies a manageable set of indicators in five common categories: education, health, environmental quality, social and cultural amenities, and information and transportation access. These indicator categories form the basis for selecting specific locations within a community where local stakeholders engage in writing a collective story about their sustainable development future. This article describes the implementation of the Five Pillars approach in two neighborhoods in Washington D.C. It concludes that the approach offers an effective engagement strategy that gives voice to the sustainable development vision of local stakeholders while providing a framework that can benefit diverse communities.