Community Development: Applications for Leisure, Sport, and Tourism takes up a range of factors affecting the relationship between community development and recreation: planning assumptions and structures, class and racial influences on engagement processes; grassroots approaches; critical consciousness through young adult literature; questions about the relationship between community and economic development; and issues of inclusion, social justice, and community empowerment.

This book initiates a discussion about the ways leisure, sport, and tourism might conceptualize the relationship with community development. It  builds upon existing research and programs; extends or reframes theoretical approaches questions; and posits alternative frameworks for playing with the intersection of community development, leisure, sport, and tourism, while interweaving current theories, ethical frameworks, practices, and critiques relevant to recreation and leisure practitioners and scholars.

The authors have taught at the higher education level. They have explored research interests in the use of arts-based methods to understand how leisure can be used as context for community development, healing, advocacy, and empowerment; the roles of leisure, sport, and tourism in community development, empowerment, and well-being; and relationships between leisure, community, and development.