The community of the future

Looking beyond the known requires new mind-sets, new eyes and ears. To help us appreciate community in its many essential forms, we have gathered about us a group of distinguished authors, leaders, academics, and philosophers. Each individual offers a unique perspective on how we can all build more vital, inclusive communities. Together, their contributions constitute a new treasury of insight and knowledge. As you read this book, we hope the visions of its authors will enrich and expand your visions of a future society in which we move smoothly from one community to the next, finding support from those around us at work, at home, and throughout our own world.

The global community of the future will be at its best a series of communities that are interdependent and diverse, embracing differences, releasing energy, and building cohesion. The broader global community will be enhanced by the health of the many smaller communities that constitute the whole. Those living within each community define all community.

It is only in our relationships with others that we are clearly able to see ourselves. The torrent of change accelerates as we approach the end of the century, and so does the need for a greater under, standing of community in its many forms. The Community of the Future, the third book in the Drucker Foundation Future Series, gathers thirty-one authors from around the world to contemplate the nature of community-where we have come from, where we are going, and how we will get there.

Peter E Drucker opens the book with his introduction, "Civilizing the City." As demographics shift and the population of the world becomes more and more urban, Peter calls on the social sector, for the first time in history, to civilize the city and build true community within.

Like the previous books in the series, The Leader of the Future and The Organization of the Future, this work does not have to be read in sequence, chapter by chapter. Rather, we hope it will be read in an order determined by the reader's inclinations. We have divided the book into six parts in order to point the way.

Part One, "Trends Shaping the Evolution of Community," opens with the help of Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Keller-Rogers, discussing the paradox and promise of community in Chapter One. Lester C. Thurow, Rita Sussmuth, and Bob Buford explore additional waves of change shaping communities in Chapters Two, Three, and Four.

Part Two, "The Values of Community," explores the ethical dimensions of diverse communities. It begins with Chapter Five, Stephen R. Covey's discussion of the makeup of an ideal community. Claire L. Gaudiani and R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. provide their perspectives in Chapters Six and Seven, and in Chapter Eight, Arun Gandhi closes with reflections on the lessons he learned as a child from his noted grandfather.

Innovation in technology is the focus of Part Three, "The Impact of New Communications Technology." In Chapter Nine, James L. Barksdale, CEO of Netscape Communications, explores the use of communications technology within organizations; in Chapter Ten, Marshall Goldsmith looks at the growth of the global community and the emergence of communities of choice; and in Chapter Eleven, Howard Rheingold examines the human vitality of virtual communities.

Part Four, "Creating Communities in Organizations," features Gifford Pinchot on building community in the workplace (Chapter Twelve) and James L. Heskett on managing for results in a public sector setting (Chapter Thirteen). Dave Ulrich and Maria Livanos Cattaui examine the organizational community and the global economy in Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen, respectively.

In Part Five, "Strengthening the Social Fabric," the diverse nature of our human communities is considered in six compelling chapters. In Chapter Sixteen, Frances Hesselbein explores the dream that lies before us. In Chapter Seventeen, Noel M. Tichy, Andrew R. McGill, and Lynda St. Clair examine a social sector success in inner-city Detroit. Bobby William Austin and Andrew J. Young present a plan for community cooperatives in Chapter Eighteen. Hugh B. Price explores economic power as a means to strengthening community in Chapter Nineteen. In Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One, Raul Yzaguirre and Suzanne W. Morse examine further dimensions of the American social fabric.

Part Six, "Global Dimensions of Community," presents perspectives from points across the globe. Richard E Schubert and Rick R. Little examine children in Chapter Twenty-Two, and Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika from Zambia and Jaime A. Zobel de Ayala Il from the Philippines end with their views on the global community (Chapters Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four).

The book closes with an afterword by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. He probes the meaning of community in contemporary life and our relationships to it. Ultimately, communities are the mirrors in which we see our true selves.

We are pleased that all of the distinguished authors of The Community of the Future have volunteered their time and donated their wisdom. They made these gifts to strengthen our communities, to rouse our thinking, to improve our understanding of our world and ourselves, and to stir us to action. Building the global community of the future is not the work of tomorrow. We are each called to build it today-to build it now.