Chen Chi-nan, then vice minister of the Council for Cultural Affairs, first advocated community building in 1994. The idea was to marry the cultural awareness of locals of a given area with government policy, thereby fostering the formation of a grassroots civil society in which locals would decide local issues.
那是 1994 年，文建會副主委陳其南首倡社造，希望透過在地居民的文化自覺與政策掖助，促使「由下而上」、「在地人決定在地事」的公民社會成型。