We are excited to announce that this year, we will be reading Connected to Place, by Matt Biggar, for our 2026 Book Club! Our first meeting will be held on Friday, March 13, from 12pm-1pm. Following our first meeting, we will hold hour-long monthly meetings from 12pm-1pm on April 10, May 15, and June 12.
The book guide and meeting discussions will contain the following content:
Application of book themes to community development and your personal work
Concept exploration/big picture ideas and the central message of the book
General discussion/sharing of personal thoughts and takeaways on the book
The book guide for the first meeting will be sent to participants on March 3rd.
We highly encourage participants to utilize their local libraries and/or universities to obtain the book. Please let us know if you will have difficulty obtaining the book at [email protected].
Connected to Place Summary
Connected to Place looks at place-based systems change as a real-world solution to our growing environmental and social crises. Matt Biggar offers a practical guide to creating conditions for societal transformation. He presents a vision that reorients people's daily lives around their neighborhoods and communities, and he shows us how we can get there. When thinking about place-based systems change, many questions arise. What systems do we change? How do we change them? What outcomes are we seeking? In Connected to Place, Biggar answers these questions for advocates, planners, policymakers, educators, and others interested in systems change. Readers will learn about the ideas, tools, and pathways imperative to creating lasting, regenerative change. By reframing our approach to social progress, Connected to Place outlines the way toward rebuilding connection with nature and local community and revitalizing local and regional economies.
Program Information
Over a 15-week period each spring, our Book Club reads and discusses books connected to core community development topics, including housing, food access, financial empowerment, economic development, and community engagement. Selections also explore place-based, urban and rural, and neighborhood-level issues, as well as empathy, leadership, and other professional development skills useful to community development practitioners. Past reads include Climate Resilience by Kylie Flanagan, Just Action by Leah Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein, and Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva. In 2023, OCDCA’s Annual Conference featured Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law, as the keynote speaker following the book’s selection for Book Club. That momentum continued in 2024 with Just Action, co-authored by Leah Rothstein and Richard Rothstein. Leah Rothstein and other featured speakers joined Book Club meetings to expand on the book’s themes, stories, and real-world applications in the community development field. In 2025, Book Club featured Climate Resilience by Kylie Flanagan, with four speakers from within our membership sharing how their organizations’ work connects to resiliency.
In 2026, Book Club will continue to support literacy and foundation-building within the community development field.
