community development as partnership
Leading Sustainability and Regeneration in Projects
SERIES ARTICLE
By Dr. Hugo Minney
United Kingdom
Figure 1 The garden outlives the gardener – if someone is charged to tend it
Abstract
The title of this series promises both sustainability and regeneration, yet the difference between the two has so far been left implicit. This article makes it explicit. Sustainability seeks to do less harm and to persist; regeneration seeks a net-positive contribution that builds the capacity of social and ecological systems to keep renewing themselves. Community development is the clearest test of that distinction, because the community is not a by-product of the project – it is the asset being changed. The article argues that regeneration is a design and governance choice made during the project, even though its value accrues for decades after handover. The decisive question is therefore one of stewardship: who holds the asset, and under what arrangement, once the project team has gone? Drawing on four named cases – London CLT at St Clements, the Big Local programme, Granby Four Streets in Toxteth, and Vauban in Freiburg – the article shows how the five Ps (People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership) are braided together in a single place, and why Partnership is the pillar that makes the others endure. It takes the opportunity to align the series with the United Nations’ internationally recognised vocabulary, while retaining the one analytical refinement that earns its place: splitting People into Community and Wellbeing.
Keywords: Regeneration, Community Development, Community Land Trust, Stewardship, Partnership, Positive Peace, Social Value, Benefits Ownership, Five Ps, Place-based regeneration.
Introduction: when the place is the project
Across this series we have examined sustainability through the sectors that project professionals recognise: construction and the built environment, energy and infrastructure, and most recently the data centres that anchor our digital ambitions (Minney 2026c, 2026b). In each, the community was present but adjacent – a stakeholder to be engaged, a recipient of social value, a holder of the social licence to operate. Community development projects invert that relationship. Here the community is not adjacent to the asset; it is the asset. The thing being changed is the place itself and the people who live in it, and they are simultaneously the client, the beneficiary, and – if the project is designed well – the eventual owner.
That inversion makes community development the truest test of regeneration. It is comparatively easy to claim a regenerative outcome for a building that produces more energy than it consumes, because the measurement is contained and the asset is inert. A neighbourhood is harder, and more revealing, because it keeps living after the project closes. Whatever we build into it – or fail to build into it – compounds. This article is therefore where the second half of the series title finally has to earn its keep. We have written a great deal about sustaining. We now have to say what regenerating means, and show that a project can deliver it.
A working scope is needed, because “community development” can be stretched until it means nothing. In this article it means place-based projects in which residents are intended to be co-owners of the outcome: community-led housing, neighbourhood regeneration, and the renewal of derelict or decommissioned places into living communities. We deliberately set aside the mechanics that earlier articles have already covered – participatory engagement and the social licence to operate (Minney 2025c), the multiplier effects and value-maturity tools of inclusive prosperity (Minney 2026a) – and refer back to them rather than repeat them. We also cede community energy schemes to the forthcoming article on energy generation and distribution, where they belong.
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Editor’s note: The author Dr. Hugo Minney is a Fellow of APM (Association for Project Management), a Member of PMI and PMI UK, Chair of APM’s Benefits and Value IN and Sustainability IN, founder of APM Nuclear Industries IN and AI & Data Analytics IN, and chair of BSI’s Working Group on Benefits Management. Minney Org Ltd offers consultancy on ROI and SROI. For more, see his author profile at the end of this article
How to cite this work: Minney, H. (2026). From sustaining to regenerating: community development as partnership, Leading Sustainability and Regeneration in Projects, series article, PM World Journal, Volume XV, Issue VII, July. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/pmwj166-Jul2026-Minney-Community-building.pdf
About the Author
Dr Hugo Minney
London, UK
Dr. Hugo Minney is a Fellow of APM (Association for Project Management), a Member of PMI and PMI UK, Lead of APM’s Benefits and Value IN (Interest Network) and Sustainability IN, founder of APM’s Nuclear Industries IN and AI & Data Analytics IN, committee member of PMI UK’s Sustainability Community of Action and Board Member of the Non-Profit PM4theWorld (none of which are paid). Minney is also chair of the British Standards Institute’s working group on Benefits Management, which publishes and maintains BS 202002 (Applying benefits management on portfolios, programmes and projects) (also unpaid).
Minney is a business consultant. He analyses the benefits of change, and weighs them up against the need for effective operations to keep the lights on; he has built business cases of all types and is acutely aware of the pressures to make a single project a success at the expense of the organisation’s objectives and the need to resist this; as a former executive board director in National Health Service he can take a portfolio overview and prioritise the individual benefits of projects to ensure the success of the whole organisation. Minney is now a project management consultant with a sideline chairing a charity restoring the sense of community for young people.
Minney specialises in putting a number on difficult benefits (such as sustainability and regeneration), motivating team members by reporting what they are achieving together and motivating teams to build the communities and companies we want to be part of – together. He believes in standards and is accredited as a Social Value practitioner and Chartered Project Professional.
Dr. Minney can be contacted at hugo.minney@thesocialreturnco.org
To view previous works by Hugo Minney, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/dr-hugo-minney/
