The paper starts from two practical findings: one is that in Romania, as in many other European countries (see Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Poland, Hungary etc.) there are many local communities living in poverty, where one cannot speak of a local economy (there is a very small number of companies with low turnover), of competent local authorities or developed civic spirit (so a development process cannot be mentioned). There are communities in a T zero state of development, stage persisting despite the existence of national or European policies in the field. The secon d finding is that over time a number of theories / methods / models of local development have been formulated, applied with more or less success. Thus, this paper aims to summa rize the main theories on local development and, as a result of their analysis, to propose a model / theory to be applied in local development processes to identify the most suitable model of development. The p roposed model is based on risk analysis in local development processes, thus generating the theory of minimal risk within them.