Abstract

This paper explores the role of community engagement in building sustainable territorial capital and territory-based governance. To illustrate the research principles involved we use the development of a community collective that started in 2006 as well as of a wind-turbine project set up in 2009 in a Nottinghamshire village . Among the obstacles to such a project is the variety of purposes of the participants. Dealing with them required initiating sustainable interactions. It is shown how such interactions may become the spark for the improvement of individual and collective life. This raises the question how such improvement can be supported systematically. Answers prove to differ from those of traditional research questions with their focus on patterns among similar exemplars. Community engagement and the growth of territorial capital start from what people do and how they deal with each other. By crafting suitable forms of interaction, a sustainable support system surfaced. It proved possible to enhance individual activities without having to define a collective preference or allow individual dominance.