This is a slightly different angle (different from thinking about projects and design principles, that is) for thinking about communities, and about your term projects. Most students choose some area of focus within a community, but keep in mind that your area of focus contributes to community functioning and quality of life. Changes that affect the community–and we’ve talked ad nauseum about how such changes often involve external forces–will affect various institutions, in different ways, and these institutions are often connected in observable ways to other forces, regional, national, even global. 

• Social capital–What organizations, individuals, institutions, have a stake and some role to play? What different kinds of social capital (e.g., bridging, bonding, linking)?
• Sustainability–In part a product of identifying and cultivating a network of social capital;
• Research–How do you propose to inform your proposal with existing research/information, and identification of gaps in knowledge (and methods of inquiry to fill them)?
• Participation–Do stakeholders have a voice, meaningful outlets for participation, reasons to believe they have an ‘ownership’ stake in the process, outcome, and ongoing evaluation (refer to Arnstein’s ladder of participation, the difference between non-participation, tokenism, and [citizen] participation)?
• Money–What are the funding streams? Public (federal/state/regional/county/local/other)? NGOs (non-governmental organizations)? Tax revenue? User fees? How diversified is funding? How dependent on business cycles? Many questions to explore and seek to answer …
• Change–It happens, people may not always have a firm grasp on what it is, what causes it, and how to respond (hence the concept of resilience), but you’ll need to find ways to examine how communities and your own areas of focus have changed over time (methods of inquiry–could be secondary data sources, could be interviews with people who have extensive experience and knowledge, etc.).
• Power–Who makes decisions? How much transparency exists? Who are the ‘leaders’, either those who have authority through their official titles and credentials, those with some other form (longevity, respect, so-called ‘opinion leaders’, influentials, interest or pressure groups, the press, etc.)? Do decision makers seek broad input and open dialogue? Do they make efforts to ‘put the last first‘?