The items below represent short annotations, to which we increasingly add full entries — with a link at the end. The terms are often associated with broader movements and public programs. We encourage linking to the main page of full entries in your course syllabi, training manuals, and similar resources, since we update the longer PDFs regularly and wish to avoid dead links as this occurs.

For brief overviews and references for some of the theoretical concepts, see Civic and Green Innovation in Democratic Theory: Core Concepts.

For suggestions and comments, email our editor: carmensirianni511@gmail.com

accountable autonomy
  • this concept, developed by political theorist Archon Fung, refers to policy and program design that enables significant autonomous action by local civic and community groups and networks, yet provides for accountability to others in larger systems of administrative and political authority. Thus, neighborhood groups in Seattle may develop neighborhood sustainability plans, but these are reviewed by relevant agencies (planning, transportation, parks) and are subject to approval by city council. CARE grants at the EPA are cooperative agreements with local environmental and health justice partnerships, but these are accountable for communication and training to agency staff teams.
assets-based community development (ABCD)
  • originally articulated by John Kretzmann and John McKnight, ABCD sees communities as having assets that can be mapped and mobilized for robust problem solving and local improvement. This “assets” approach is contrasted to social service, organizing, and administrative approaches that see communities primarily as bundles of “deficits” to be remedied by outside interventions. 
baykeeper or riverkeeper
  • a nonprofit group organized along a river or bay with a boat that enables citizens to monitor water quality, identify threats, provide environmental education, engage volunteers in restoration, and hold authorities accountable.
bicycle association
  • a nonprofit civic association that advocates for bike improvements in street design and often collaborates with city transportation officials in co-design. Bicycle associations also organize rides, celebrations and other cultural events, and increasingly work with pedestrian and other transportation groups for multimodal options and transportation equity and environmental justice. Full entry.
citizen advisory committee
  • enabled by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (1972), as well as by local and state laws and regulations, citizen advisory committees, task forces, councils, and commissions are designed to represent a range of views and interests, such as environmental, business, and science, and to offer formal advice to specific agencies, programs, or officials. Relevant examples include the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC, now with a counterpart at the White House), the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (NUCFAC), and the National Environmental Education Advisory Council (NEEAC).
citizen science
  • scientific work undertaken by ordinary lay citizens, school students, and local civic and community groups, often in collaboration with professional scientists and science-based institutions, such as public agencies, research institutes, and medical centers. Community-level and ecosystem work is sometimes organized across a larger regional, state, national, and even international network.
civic innovation
  • developed initially by Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland, this term characterizes a variety of forms of innovation that occur in many fields through local civic groups and state and national civic associations to enhance capacities for public problem solving, typically in collaboration with public agencies and other institutions, though often preceded by generative conflict over power, resources, and perspectives.
civilian climate corps
  • this proposed “new CCC,” which draws from the original Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, would increase membership in national service by several tens and hundreds of thousands, if not more. Members would work on forest and coastal restoration, wildfire prevention and response, land conservation and stewardship, park and trail maintenance, disaster response in face of hurricanes and floods, watershed restoration, energy efficiency in homes and low-income housing construction, and environmental justice partnerships. See national service.
climate action plan
  • these have been developed by cities and counties, as well as at other levels of government, to inventory greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to develop strategies for significant reductions. Such plans increasingly address strategies for resilience in the face of disasters and disruptions, as well as social and racial justice across the spectrum from risk to resilience to rebuilding. Some plans are made with significant input from local civic and professional associations, as well as frontline communities that are most vulnerable to climate change.
collaborative community conservation
  • an approach that emphasizes the role of citizens and organized stakeholders in developing consensus-based, holistic responses to the complex ecological problems that cross regulatory and jurisdictional boundaries and seeks to engage partners in sustained deliberation, trust-building, and shared work so that ecological, economic, and community goals can be addressed in integrative ways. Participants typically include ranchers, farmers, foresters, environmental groups, and public agencies. With climate disruption and political polarization, collaborative approaches become ever more relevant. Full Entry.
collaborative governance
  • this concept captures a range of ways in which public managers in many kinds of agencies, including urban and environmental ones, work across their bureaucratic silos, as well as across and through networks of nongovernmental actors, to solve problems and produce public value. Collaborative governance can be narrow in terms of the types of partners involved, although it can also be creative and robust in engaging a broad array of everyday citizens and civic groups. “Network governance” and other terms are also used.
community design charrette
  • an intensive, often multi-day process of design for a neighborhood, city plaza, transit-oriented rail station, or disaster recovery plan that engages community groups, local officials, and developers with a multidisciplinary team of professionals, such as architects, planners, sociologists, and economists.
community development corporation (CDC)
  • a nonprofit group oriented to developing low-income communities, especially through housing, but increasingly including sustainability goals, such as green jobs, community gardening, and green building. CDCs often work in partnership with government agencies, local banks, and other partners, and receive funding through them and various federal, state, and local programs.
community gardens
  • land gardened collectively by residents in a local community, with both individual and shared plots, typically with shared decision making as well as other community-building activities, such as holiday, birthday, and wedding celebrations. Cities often sponsor community gardening programs, provide some staff and resources, as well as land, although land tenure can be a contentious issue. Food justice and youth activism also takes place through urban gardening projects and programs. Full Entry.
complete streets
  • this term is utilized for safe, multimodal forms of transportation, with cycling, walking, and public transport options (in addition to autos and delivery trucks) to accommodate everyone, including seniors, people with disabilities, and children, especially going to and from school. Cities increasingly are adopting complete streets legislation.
coproduction
  • entails contributions by multiple actors to produce public goods and services. For example, community health may be produced not just by medical professionals, but also by families and schools, urban gardeners and bicycle associations, community kayaking on rivers and streams restored by watershed associations, promotoras de salud going door to door with information and education on asthma.  
creation care
  • developed by religious environmentalists, especially Christians across multiple denominations, this term signals the ethos and mission of humans to care for the creation that God has left them. Similar religious framing includes “earth care,” “restoring creation,” and “practicing sustainability” – and other faiths and ecumenical coalitions have their own distinct language. Creation care has taken on special urgency due to the climate crisis, but is not limited to this. It encompasses the many dimensions of despoilment of the natural world, as well as threats to human life and health, especially of the poor. Hence, creation care has strong links to environmental justice, as well as to land and water conservation, stewardship of natural resources, sustainable forestry, community gardening, energy conservation, and ecological, watershed, and habitat restoration. While often proceeding on separate tracks than secular environmental lobbying and policy development, creation care has many overlaps with those civic green approaches that engage ordinary citizens in collaboration and trust-building across cultural and political divisions. Creation care asks that Christians work as “partners” with God and, in effect, partners across communities.
deliberative democracy
  • an approach to democratic theory and practice that stresses deliberation among citizens and other stakeholders, who consider each other’s arguments and interests to reach a broader sense of the pubic good, rather than simply advocating and voting on pre-formed preferences and interests. Many innovative forms have emerged, as well as complex ways of configuring “deliberative systems,” with multiple ecologies of democratic voice and civic relationship.
democratic professionalism
  • developed by Albert Dzur and others, this concept captures how professionals across many different fields, including sustainability, architecture, and urban planning, can use their training, capabilities, and authority to help citizens solve problems together. Such professionals, including their associations and professional schools, help enable local knowledge and broad public deliberation, and work as genuine partners with diverse groups. Full Entry.
disaster resilience
  • a concept that stresses not only reducing and resisting risk, but building resilience to “bounce back” or “bounce forward” in response to disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and heat waves. Various forms of social and community capital, as well as collaborative planning, are among those central to disaster resilience measurement and toolkits.
environmental education
  • science-based education in schools, youth groups, national environmental associations (Audubon, National Wildlife Federation), and institutions (museums, zoos, aquariums, and arboretums), often combined with community-based participatory research, citizen science, and active stewardship. Full entry.
environmental justice
  • the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental risks and benefits, regardless of race, color, national origin, and income. This minimal definition is often expanded to include more robust conceptions of the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological integrity, rights to participate in all relevant settings, local knowledge and street science, and other normative and policy goals. Full entry.
estuary restoration
  • estuaries are complex ecosystems because they combine freshwater fed by inland rivers and streams with saltwater maritime environments subject to tides and the regular influx of saline water into semi-enclosed coastal areas.  Their most common names are bay, sound, harbor, inlet, and lagoon. They are under threat from many sources (population growth, coastal development, agricultural runoff, overfishing, sea level rise), and watershed and estuary groups develop an array of strategies to protect and restore them, typically in multi-stakeholder governance arrangements supported by several federal programs. Congress created the National Estuary Program in 1987, which contains 28 NEPs around the country.
food policy councils
  • organized at the city, county, and state levels, these councils serve as deliberative forums for assessing and recommending policy. They often include food security and anti-hunger activists, family farmers, local restaurant and retail businesses, food workers, and farm worker unions, as well as environmentalists, planners, nutritionists and other public health workers. Community gardens, CSAs, and farmers’ markets might also send representatives .
green building
  • energy and resource efficient design, construction, renovation, operation, maintenance, and demolition of buildings that engages the range of appropriate professional stakeholders, craft and kitchen staff, and often others in surrounding neighborhoods, among city planners, and among users, such as students, teachers, and parents in green school building teams. Green building associations and councils drive development of the field, with the use of rating systems such as LEED to aid in design and measure effectiveness at the building site level, for whole neighborhoods, and increasingly for entire cities and communities.
healthy cities and communities
  • environmental factors, such as housing, street design, urban food, and open space, are key to community health and health justice, and multiple community and institutional stakeholders can collaborate to coproduce heath. Partners can include grassroots and youth groups, local nonprofits, and neighborhood associations, as well as schools, medical institutions, and a broad array of city departments (environment, planning, health, traffic, police). Participatory urban governance that leverages social capital and local knowledge can anchor heathy community strategies. Full entry.
land trusts
  • nonprofit organizations designed to conserve land by undertaking or assisting direct land transactions through purchase, donations, or conservation easements, which are legal agreements that restrict the development and use of land to ensure protection of its conservation values. The land trust thus holds title to the land, brokers sale or resale to public agencies or public-private partnerships, or holds specific management and development rights transferred from the property holder in return for reduced taxes based on the remaining value of the land. The land trust may also help organize stewardship through professionals and volunteers. 
multi-stakeholder visioning
  • this engages ordinary members of a community or city, as well as organized stakeholders with multiple and often divergent interests, in a process of developing a shared vision for how the community might develop in the years to come. Visioning is ambitious but not utopian. It seeks to identify enough common ground and a shared stake in the future to help motivate pragmatic action and build trust for an extended process of transformation.
national service
  • in the United States, national service has taken a variety of forms, from the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s to AmeriCorps of the 1990s until today. It has been voluntary and selective, rather than mandatory and universal, and is organized and funded typically through partnership of the Corporation for National and Community Service, state service commissions, and a broad array of nonprofits. Many projects focus on conservation, reforestation, watershed restoration, fighting wildfires, and disaster response, and seek to inculcate a civic ethic through public work. A new Civilian Climate Corps could build upon these foundations. Full Entry.
neighborhood planning
  • a process by which local residents, often with neighborhood business associations, engage in visioning and planning a broad range of features in their neighborhoods, from local parks and recreation sites to transit stations and bike routes to artistic and cultural design. Cities vary in how they institutionalize neighborhood planning, from selective responses to neighborhood protest to broad coverage across most areas. Some cities institutionalize robust collaboration and mutual accountability among civic groups and a wide range of city departments.
participatory geographic information systems (PGIS)
  • these use a variety of geospatial mapping tools, including participatory 3D modelling and aerial photography, in collaboration with local users and disadvantaged community groups to enhance local decision making and community empowerment. They have important applications to sustainability planning, environmental justice, and ecosystem protection and restoration. 
participatory policy feedback
  • building upon the insight that policy designs condition future policy options through resource and cognitive effects, participatory policy feedback effects are ones that encourage further civic and political engagement of program recipients. Such engagement can take the form of voting to protect and expand such programs (seniors for Social Security), engaging in other forms of civic activity as a form of reciprocity (civic association membership of GI Bill recipients after WWII), or joining movements to expand civic dignity and participation (GI Bill for African American veterans in civil rights movement). Policy design can also dampen civic participation by sending messages that recipients are dependent and unworthy.
policy design for democracy
  • an approach that stresses how policy design can help “empower, enlighten, and engage citizens in the process of self-government.” Policy design could and should aim to strengthen civil society and community capacities for public problem solving, rather than routinely shift ever greater authority and initiative into the hands of bureaucrats or market actors. Such design can occur locally (e.g. citywide neighborhood sustainability planning), across an ecosystem (e.g. estuary programs that require participation among civic and other groups), and nationally (e.g. through national service in partnership with state commissions and nonprofits).
social capital
  • those stocks of social trust, norms, and networks that people can draw upon to solve common problems. Bonding social capital represents strong ties deriving from ethnic or religious associations and neighborhood groups, but that also have a potentially dark side of excluding outsiders. Bridging forms of social capital connect group members to extralocal networks and reach across boundaries of potential or actual ethnic, racial, and religious cleavage. Linking forms connect group members to institutionalized power and authority. Appropriate mixes of these forms of social capital can serve as powerful resources for community and economic development, as well for resilient response to disruptions and disasters. Full Entry.
street science
  • developed by Jason Corburn, street science represents the creative melding of local and professional knowledge. Local knowledge can derive from everyday experience, ethnic culture, sense of place, and resistance to power, whereas professional knowledge tends to be more abstract, science-based, and sanctioned by powerful institutions. Local resistance and creative community conflict can produce powerful incentives for melding the two and enhancing both professional and lay knowledge that leads to health, environmental, and other improvements in community life. 
sustainable cities
  • sustainable cities and communities refer to local governance strategies to achieve ecological, economic, and social sustainability in ways that are integrated and complementary, that is, without perverse tradeoffs between ecology and economy and in ways that enhance social goals of equity, diversity, community, and democracy. This term began to be utilized tentatively in the U.S. during the 1980s by activists and professionals to help knit together urban civic and environmental innovations of previous decades. Full Entry.
urban and community forestry
  • urban and community forestry is the field of practice that stewards trees and forests in cities, suburbs, and towns, often with substantial civic engagement and institutional partnership. Objectives encompass everything from maintaining and improving water quality, habitat, and biodiversity, to improving public health and safety and capturing carbon. Urban and community forestry has multiple origin points that are distinct, but often converge. Full Entry.
watershed association
  • a nonprofit civic association, typically utilizing a holistic and ecological watershed approach, to protect and restore rivers, streams, and larger watersheds, such as a river system or an estuary. These sometimes have other nomenclature, such as watershed alliance and watershed council, which may signify a different structure. Full entry.