Towards Sustainable Community: A Study on Social Capital, Community Building and Community Development

After discussion and analysis, this study proposed suggestions for the reference of policy, practice and academy. Suggestions for policy include: (1)empowering community residents, strengthening community democratic; (2)creating the cooperative opportunities and partnership between community, village offices and neighborhood organizations; (3)correcting the phenomenon of ‘valuing long-distance relatives, disregarding neighbors’; (4)amending the biased development of ‘valuing materials, disregarding humanitarian’; (5)fostering valuable communities, closing the gap between communities; (6)valuing the development of ‘humanitarian environment’ of aboriginal communities; (7)avoiding the decline of bridging social capital of traditional communities; and (8)constructing community social capital as the basis of community building and community development.

Suggestions for practice include: (1)encouraging community households and residents participating community organizations; (2)employing full-time or part-time community workforce, and motivating community sense of higher-educators ; (3)considering the capacity of conducting community projects; and (4)encouraging community joining government’s III evaluation. Suggestions for academic research include: (1)developing evidence-based survey of community residents; and (2)creating community data-base of social capital, community building and community development.

The qualitative analysis shows that there are various factors influencing community social capital, community building and community development, and community building and community development are affected by community social capital. After discussion and analysis, this study proposed suggestions for the reference of policy and practice. Suggestions for policy include: (1)re-defining the definition and scope of community; (2)planning a set of concrete, stable and integrated community policy; (3)investing community value of ‘deliberative democracy’; (4)closing the gap between weak and strong communities in development; and (5)building the partnership between community, private and public sectors.

Suggestions for government’s practice include: (1)simplifying the application and auditing procedure; (2)strengthening personnel functions of community business; and (3)flowing the communication channel for community and government. Suggestions for community include: (1)exploiting multi-source of community funding; (2)searching strategies for consolidating community sense; (3)motivating resident’s willingness and action of community participation; (4)reconciling the disagreement and opposition of community clique; (5)excavating and cultivating community professional talents; and (6)establishing learning culture of community.