The author of the article considers prerequisites for forming the concept of local community building and its main points. He analyzed approaches to building communities on the basis of exogenous and endogenous types of development and identified their characteristics and methods of implementation as well.

The article focuses on the importance of the problem which is caused by the necessity to comprehend theoretically phenomena of social transformations within the frames of local collective bodies and to substantiate the appropriate methodology for developing local communities, taking into account national traditions of self-government.

The main conclusions: the concept of local community building stipulates the transition of local communities from the objects of government to the subjects of government; getting free from external dependence; creating conditions for an individual to participate in the community life, their self-actualization and self-determination. The concept implies that the source and resources for development are not placed outside the local community but are enclosed in it itself; external government is succeeded by self-government; the driving force of transformations is a local community which firmly establishes itself while changing its environment.