For years, Abundant Community Edmonton has been steadily cultivating a citywide culture and ecosystem of neighborhood connection, caring and belonging, block by block. The founder, Howard Lawrence, was inspired by John and Peter’s book The Abundant Community to take to his block in search of stronger community in his and his neighbors’ lives. The result has been an impressive wave of government-backed citizenship and grassroots innovation.
In the podcast below, Howard chats with The Neighboring Movement about their latest learnings and reflections.
About this Podcast Episode:
In this episode, we had the honor of interviewing Howard Lawrence in Edmonton, Alberta. Amongst so much more, Howard is an experienced neighboring practitioner, an expert on asset-based community development, and the leader of Edmonton’s Abundant Communities Initiative.
As host Adam names in this episode, if you’ve been in the ABCD (asset-based community development) world for long, Howard’s name is gonna crop up! He has been experimenting with various neighboring and ABCD practices for years, and he is also at the helm of this work within a city with incredible neighboring infrastructure. In this episode, Howard dives deep into how this work looks on the ground in Edmonton and also other contexts, and it’s jam packed with resources, stories, and learnings. We are so very excited to share this one with you all, and we hope you enjoy!
And, to learn more about Howard’s work and the Abundant Communities Initiative, visit Edmonton’s city website here.
This podcast was originally published on https://neighboringmovement.org.
Image is from the Abundant Community Edmonton website.
Going Further:
- The Neighboring Movement website
- The Neighborhood is the Center (Harges)
- Every Block a Village (Jung)
- “Taking Asset-Based Community Development to [Every] Neighborhood” (Tamarack Institute)
- Reclaiming Citizen Power: Angela Fell (Fell, Pula)
