Love Your Neighborhood Article

Building Communities from What's Strong, Not What's Wrong

Why did you choose to live in the neighborhood you call home?

Ask ten people, and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Maybe it’s the big backyard or the welcoming front porches. Maybe it’s the ability to walk to work or school, the buzz of a lively entertainment scene, the affordability of the homes, or the quiet calm at the end of the day. Often, it’s the people, the neighbors who wave, stop to chat, or show up when it matters.

What rarely makes the list?

High crime rates. Vacant houses. Crumbling sidewalks. Trash-filled alleyways. Or neighbors who don’t care.

We choose where we live based on assets, not deficits.

And yet, for decades, the work of community development in the United States has done the opposite.

From Deficits to Dependence

Since the 1960s, much of our national approach to community development has been shaped by the “War on Poverty,” launched under President Lyndon B. Johnson. This era brought significant investments and programs like Head Start, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and Community Action Programs, many of which provided critical short-term relief and reduced poverty rates initially (Johnson, 1964; Bailey & Danziger, 2013).

But these efforts were rooted in a top-down mindset: that government or outside institutions could diagnose problems and deliver solutions to communities. While well-intentioned, this approach often failed to address deeper issues like systemic racism, economic restructuring, and the erosion of social networks resulting from urbanization (Putnam, 2000; Wilson, 1987).

In some cases, deficit-focused interventions unintentionally fostered dependency, weakened informal support systems, or sidelined resident voice (McKnight, 1995). As a very real example, welfare programs are often designed with sharp income thresholds. When a recipient finds a job or gets a promotion, the sudden loss of benefits can exceed the gain in wages, leaving them financially worse off for having worked more. In this example, work and obtaining higher wages are disincentivized. As a result, many communities have experienced persistent, multigenerational poverty despite decades of policy intervention.

We’ve tried to fix neighborhoods by focusing on what’s broken, and too often we’ve missed what’s already working.

We've tried to fix neighborhoods by focusing on what's broken, and too often we've missed what's already working.

A Different Way Forward: Asset-Based Community Development

In 1993, John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann offered a powerful alternative in their book Building Communities from the Inside Out. They called it Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)—and it flipped the script on traditional community development.

ABCD starts with a simple but transformative idea:

Communities are not empty vessels of need; they are rich with assets.

Rather than defining a neighborhood by its problems, ABCD begins by identifying and mobilizing strengths already present: residents’ skills, talents, passions, relationships, and lived experiences (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). It is inherently place-based, grounded in a specific geographic community and the people who call it home.

Where a deficit-based approach asks, “What’s wrong here?”
ABCD asks, “What’s strong here, and how do we build on it?”

This approach positions residents as leaders and co-creators of change, with institutions playing a supportive, not dominant, role (McKnight & Block, 2010). While ABCD does not deny the reality of challenges, it refuses to define communities by their brokenness.

At its core, ABCD offers hope: the belief that even in neighborhoods facing disinvestment or disrepair, people can imagine and build a better future together.

The Five Guiding Questions of ABCD

At its core, ABCD is guided by five practical questions (adapted from McKnight & Kretzmann):

  • What can residents do best by themselves?
  • What do they need some help from organizations to do?
  • What do organizations do best?
  • What can we stop doing because residents can do it themselves?
  • What can we offer to support community-led action?

These questions help shift power, clarify roles, and keep residents at the center of decision-making.

From Theory to Practice: Listen, Align, Act, Measure

In practice, ABCD unfolds through an ongoing cycle of Listen, Align, Act, and Measure, all within a defined neighborhood or geographic boundary.

The process begins with listening. A facilitator, in LYN called a Lead Agency, engages residents using Appreciative Inquiry, a strengths-based approach to learning from communities by focusing on what gives life to a place (Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008).

Through listening, ideas are woven into a shared vision. Residents are aligned around common interests, connected to one another and to supportive resources, and empowered to take action. Progress is measured using both qualitative and quantitative indicators, and then the cycle begins again (Bushe, 2007).

How Love Your Neighborhood Does ABCD Differently

ABCD is practiced around the world, and no two applications look the same. At Community One, our Love Your Neighborhood approach reflects more than a decade of listening, learning, practicing, and adapting.

Through our lead agency work in Tepe Park and our coaching with other communities, we’ve identified a clear calling: keep residents at the center, always.

Love Your Neighborhood practitioners move at the speed of the neighborhood. We prioritize relationships over timelines and resident leadership over predetermined outcomes. This approach may feel slower, but research consistently shows that resident-led, relationship-driven change is more sustainable over time (Putnam, 2000; Westley et al., 2013).

By meeting residents where they are and inviting them into the change process as leaders, we interrupt cycles of dependency and reshape the narrative. Communities are no longer problems to be solved; they become places of possibility.

And that’s how lasting transformation begins:
one neighborhood, one relationship, one asset at a time.

Sources and Further Reading

Bailey, M. J., & Danziger, S. (2013). Legacies of the War on Poverty. Russell Sage Foundation.

Bushe, G. R. (2007). Appreciative inquiry is not (just) about the positive. Organization Development Journal, 39(4), 30–35.

Cooperrider, D. L., Whitney, D., & Stavros, J. M. (2008). Appreciative inquiry handbook: For leaders of change (2nd ed.). Berrett-Koehler.

Johnson, L. B. (1964). Annual message to the Congress on the state of the Union. The American Presidency Project.

Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. L. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. ACTA Publications.

McKnight, J. L. (1995). The careless society: Community and its counterfeits. Basic Books.

McKnight, J. L., & Block, P. (2010). The abundant community: Awakening the power of families and neighborhoods. Berrett-Koehler.

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.

Westley, F., Zimmerman, B., & Patton, M. Q. (2013). Getting to maybe: How the world is changed. Vintage Canada.

Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged. University of Chicago Press.

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