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The paper presents the results of community-based participatory action research that evaluated the quality and extent of resident participation in community development projects initiated by a network of non-profit and public agencies in a lower-income, racialized neighbourhood in Toronto. The paper examines dynamics of community engagement and volunteer participation in relation to the socio-political context of neoliberal urban development within which they unfold. Against this backdrop, the paper discusses processes of normalization and the mainstreaming of a technocratic or instrumental approach to community engagement. The paper argues how this instrumental approach extracts volunteer participation from residents to meet short-term organizational targets while offering no genuine opportunity for residents to co-create long-term, meaningful solutions to community needs and priorities. Such short-term, 'band-aid' community engagement and capacity building projects contribute to a crisis of trust between residents and the non-profit agencies. The paper presents a community engagement continuum mapping indicators for technocratic and extractivist community engagement in contrast to indicators for transformative and empowering processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores emerging contradictions in community development, a subset of non-profit sector, within the context of neoliberalization. I examine non-profit sector as a site that has a potential for articulating counter-hegemonic discourse alternative to neoliberalism. Conversely, non-profit sector itself has been subjected to neoliberal co-optation and restructuring that resulted in restricted autonomy of the sector and decreased capacity to advocate for progressive social change. Drawing on my experience as a community engagement worker in one of Toronto's neighbourhood improvement areas, I problematize community development, posing questions about the role of the non-profit agencies in the production of specific socio-economic configurations that may, albeit inadvertently, support neoliberal discourse. Through an example of local community campaign for increased access to public space and services, I highlight options to enhance counterhegemonic potential of community development as a critical practice aimed at advancing the commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]