URBS 230 Community Leadership & Service Learning

Study Questions for The Community of the Future

Introduction: How do we create urban community?

Ch.1: What are the implications of boundaries as meeting places rather than walls?

Ch. 2: Can you have an economy without a community? A community without an economy?

Ch. 3: What is the balance between “need” and “aid”?

Ch. 4: What is the link between Boomers, New Church, and social entrepreneurs?

Ch. 5: Where does the “compelling vision” for the leader come from? What values are implied (and spoken) in the article? Are they democratic values?

Ch. 6: Do all “wisdom traditions” converge? How does a community select among the diversity of wisdom traditions within it? p. 60—What do you know about these traditions? What others would you offer for consideration (e.g., cf. p. 90)

Ch. 7: Why is diversity so challenging? (see Ch. 8, too)

Ch. 8: Do individualism and community building have an inverse relationship?

Ch. 9: What is the downside to asynchronous, collaborative, global communication?

Ch.10: What is the role of place if communities are global and choice-base? Can place be just another “choice”?

Ch.11: Can virtual community rebuild civil society, or is it a “beautiful illusion” (p. 122)?

Ch.12: What does “shared environment” say about “virtual community” (Ch.11) and “community of choice” (Ch.10)?

Ch.13: How practical is Heskett’s “change management model”? Do you agree with him that “some measure, no matter how approximate, is better than none” (p. 152)?

Ch.14: Of the 6 practices for creating a community of values, which are not implied by the first? What are the implications for “globalism,” diversity, and the values of Gandhi’s ashram?

Ch.15: Why must governments see business as their natural partners in the process of globalization (p. 174)?

Ch.16: Compare Hesselbein’s 4 steps for addressing community problems (p. 178) to Heskett’s 9 stages (p. 146). How is Hesselbein’s sense of community (p. 177—first sentence) reflected (or not) in the other essays? Why these 6 rather than some other criteria? Hesselbein proposes to use business leaders to build community (p. 178ff.). Is this a case of “participating the public”?

Ch.17: What other social needs might be successfully addressed through a nonprofit business approach like Focus:Hope?

Ch.18: What are the countervailing forces arrayed against “cooperative commonwealths” and “parallel economy”? How can they be overcome for this vision to succeed?

Ch.19: How do you support diversity within community? How do “we” avoid creating a “they”?

Ch.20: In what ways do we mirror the world? Why is the last line funny? What words have Americans imported into their version of English from other cultures?

Ch.21: How do we move the discussion in civic dialogue from what “I” think to what “we” think? Who are “we”?

Ch.22: What are the drawbacks to the “invest in success” model (p. 245)?

Ch. 23: Are the 5 (6?) points for a positive foundation necessary? Sufficient?

Ch.24: What does he mean by “selfish individualism that has scarred Western societies” (p. 270)? If globalization and communications are forces for communities of interest, how can he believe that community of place will continue to be important (p. 270)?

Afterword: Is our ethical growth keeping pace with our technological (and economic) growth (p. 274)?