Community Resilience Needs Community Intelligence: The OECD Has Reinforced What Many Communities Already Know
For many years, governments have invested heavily in strengthening infrastructure, improving emergency management, and responding to crises after they occur. These investments remain essential. However, a growing body of international evidence shows that physical infrastructure alone is not enough to create resilient communities.
The OECD has now reinforced this message through its landmark report Area-based Initiatives to Transform Neighbourhoods. The report can be accessed here
The report argues that neighbourhoods are where many of society's greatest opportunities—and greatest challenges—are experienced. When communities are left behind, disadvantage often becomes concentrated geographically, affecting health, education, employment, safety, trust and social cohesion. Conversely, when neighbourhoods become stronger, the benefits extend well beyond local boundaries.
The report identifies more than forty place-based initiatives across OECD countries and concludes that successful neighbourhood transformation depends on integrated action that brings together governments, local organisations, businesses, schools, health providers and residents themselves. Rather than delivering isolated programmes, successful communities build local capability, strengthen partnerships and enable residents to participate in shaping their own future.
This represents an important shift in thinking.
For decades, policy has often focused on programmes delivered to communities.
The OECD is increasingly pointing towards policies developed with communities.
That distinction matters.
Communities possess knowledge, relationships, local leadership and lived experience that cannot be replicated by central agencies. They understand emerging issues long before those issues appear in official statistics. They often identify practical solutions that are invisible from national or regional perspectives.
This is where I believe the next evolution of public policy lies.
Alongside community resilience, we must develop community intelligence.
Community intelligence is the collective ability of a community to understand itself, identify emerging opportunities and risks, learn continuously, and make better decisions together. It combines local knowledge with robust evidence to create a richer understanding of place.
Community intelligence asks questions such as:
How connected do neighbours feel?
Where are vulnerabilities increasing?
Which groups are becoming isolated?
What strengths already exist within the community?
Which interventions are creating the greatest public value?
Where should scarce resources be invested first?
Without answers to these questions, governments are often forced to make decisions using incomplete information.
The OECD also highlights the importance of improving coordination between different levels of government while strengthening local capacity and participation. It calls for place-based approaches that integrate economic, social and physical development while engaging communities as active partners rather than passive recipients.
Community intelligence provides the practical foundation for this vision.
It enables communities to measure what matters.
It helps local leaders identify priorities before problems become crises.
It allows governments to invest where interventions will have the greatest long-term impact.
It strengthens trust because residents can see their experiences reflected in decision-making.
It supports continuous learning rather than one-off consultation.
Importantly, community intelligence is not simply about collecting more data.
It is about combining quantitative evidence with local insight.
Official statistics tell us what is happening.
Communities often know why it is happening.
Together they produce far better decisions than either can alone.
This is the philosophy underpinning our work through the Aotearoa Community Resilience Network (ACoRN) and the Newlands Resilience Group.
Over several years we have been developing an annual Community Wellbeing and Resilience Survey that tracks social connection, preparedness, trust, participation, perceptions of place and many other indicators at neighbourhood level. The purpose is not simply measurement.
The purpose is learning.
Learning enables better conversations.
Better conversations enable better decisions.
Better decisions create better outcomes.
As governments face increasing fiscal pressure, climate risks, demographic change and growing public expectations, investing in community capability becomes increasingly important. Strong neighbourhoods reduce demand on public services, improve wellbeing, strengthen disaster preparedness and build social capital that cannot easily be purchased after a crisis.
The OECD's recent work provides timely international recognition that neighbourhoods matter.
I would go one step further.
Neighbourhoods need more than resilience.
They need intelligence.
Because resilient communities are not simply those that recover from adversity.
They are communities that understand themselves, learn together, adapt early and make wise decisions before challenges become crises.
If we genuinely want stronger cities, regions and nations, the place to begin is the neighbourhood—and the capability of communities to generate the intelligence needed for better decisions and better outcomes.