Can Community-led plans ever be comprehensive?
Can communities be expected to cover all the bases that such a plan would require? One of the things I have done in the PhD I am doing (nearing completion) is to take the Resilience Indicators developed in the Totnes EDAP and drop them into a table generated by Liz Cox at New Economics Foundation of indicators for a sustainable economy. What emerges is that Resilience Indicators generated by a community (well, Totnes at least) tend to fall within the columns that relate to economics, local resilient infrastructure and so on, and not in governance, social enterprise and interdependence (seeing the wider picture) – these things fall, at least in the case of Totnes, outside of a community’s interests/expertise, yet they are essential to an effective and comprehensive response. They are areas that are usually the domain of Council planners, enterprise agencies, businesses and so on. The Totnes EDAP is the community’s plan, reflective of the passions and interests of those that get involved
