Critical appraisal of three ideas for community development in the United States

What is the connection among the moral, social, and physical aspects of the community? To explore this question, this article reviews three approaches: communitarianism, social capital, and new urbanism and smart growth. They are linked by a conceptual mapping along two dimensions: geographical scale (local to global) and strength of community (strong to weak). The approaches meld at local and regional geographical scales. Since the strong community in all three is susceptible to community determinism, I privilege the weak community. The approaches put a renewed emphasis on public and civic spaces, which are moral, social, and physical spaces for the weak community.