On the basis of research into proven strategies of socio-economic revitalization, including its own experience as a practitioner of community-based economic development (CED), the Centre for Community Enterprise developed a model of community resilience. This model expresses in terms of 23 resilience characteristics a community's capacity to shape its own ways of life and work. The Centre also designed and field-tested a process by which small towns could use this model cost-effectively to assess their situation, and focus their economic and social planning accordingly.