Abstract

The role of community engagement in the development of sustainable territorial capital and territory-based governance is explored. The aim is firstly, to describe the development of a community that started in 2006 in a
Nottinghamshire village1 and secondly, to identify what might be learned. The latter is argued to take the form of research principles. The challenges to the development of the community included the coordination of the variety of
purposes of the participants. The central tenet of the research principles is the initiation of sustainable interactions that support the improvement of individual life. The principles differ from those of traditional research, but they are shown to belong to the same class as the latter. In the example a sustainable support system was described that enhanced individual activities without the need for a collective preference or some individual’s dominance.