Community development has always been vulnerable to criticism that it is a term that is both vague and pretentious – claiming too much. Let us begin by taking two examples of how community development tackles local issues:

• • A community association based in an urban neighbourhood negotiates with the local authority to have a local refuse tip closed because of evidence of leaking gases. The tip is filled in, grassed over and becomes a small environmental park. It is owned by the local authority but is maintained and serviced through a partnership agreement between the community association and the local authority.

• • In a former coal mining area, a development trust is set up to tackle issues of unemployment and lack of investment. Achievements include the development of a former café as the base for a wide range of local services including space let to tenants and £1.3 million investment in new office premises to meet demand for rented space and provide new community facilities.

In the first example, we can see traces of the tradition of self-help as well as the contemporary emphasis on partnership working, both themes associated closely with the northern European experience of community development. The project is making a modest contribution to the community. In the second example, there is evidence of community development being strongly linked with the local economy and it is seeking to make a significant impact on economic and social development. It is ambitious.

Part of the problem when discussing community development is uncertainty about its scope. On what scale is it operating? Is it essentially about voluntary involvement or does it depend on there being professional intervention? However, perhaps a more serious aspect of the problem lies in disagreements, some of them at a fundamental level, about the purpose of community development. These are often expressed in terms of the contrast between, on the one hand, community development as a campaigning activity, part of the tradition of social movements globally and, on the other, community development as an intervention, helping to ensure that local people have opportunities to participate as well as to be supported. Historically, this disagreement rests on the duality of community development as a social movement and a profession.