098R_Building social capital: A learning agenda for the twenty-first century

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You can find the transcript through this link.


Are you interested in how to create social capital for the 21st century?


Our summary today works with the article titled Building social capital: A learning agenda for the twenty-first century from 1997 by Patricia A. Wilson, published in the Urban Studies journal.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how to create the so many times required social capital – which will also be partially our topic with Noel Tighe, the next interviewee in episode 99. This article presents the importance of social capital and how professionals can participate in building it.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

  1. Social capital is the propensity for individuals to join together to address mutual needs and to pursue common interest and it is needed because it increases a community’s productive potential and the cultural will to solve community problems collaboratively.
  2. The concept of the social capital also lends legitimacy to the idea of the individual in the community: each person is defined not just alone but in relationship to others.
  3. The successful community is not a collection of atomistic individuals bumping into each other’s self-interest, but rather is a network, a web of individuals-in-community and experts and professionals can help such networks with proper tools and skills.

Connecting episode you might be interested in:


What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on twitter @WTF4Cities or here in the comment section!

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I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.


Music by Lesfm from Pixabay

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