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Having spent some small time with Peter I can say that Community also reflects the intelligence and grace that he himself posses in person. Peter has captured one of the most difficult subjects which is how to make community happen. His book is rich with both insights and also a range of practical methodologies from many different sources that lead you on a journey of understanding not just of your own communities but of how to actually design a future for yourself and your community. I found Peter's work invaluable both in creating the free web site [.]. and in wrting my own book Stone Soup: The Secret Recipe for Making Something from Nothing which deals with how to form a company or organisation from scratch.Peter is very readable and A must for anyone who seeks to understand what makes their community function and also wishes to transform some aspect fo their community or their life.
Other than that, I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it. I recommend it- as an audio book. This book has so much breadth, and yet Peter also goes into the details behind how to structure community interactions, down to specific techniques, questions, and environmental factors to take into consideration. I tried to read this hardcover and could not make it through the first hundred or so pages. The book starts with a lot of the theory behind community and although it was definitely good background, and particularly interesting to me, the way he writes it would put me to sleep in a second. He provides a well-rounded view of community in many of its forms and does a good job of bringing much of the thinking around this topic in one place. The book does tend to be a bit scattered, especially if you read it hardcover, but it was incredibly valuable to me.
Community is not that book. By bringing everyone to the table and creating an environment that allows everyone equal standing, we can create communities that perpetuate a feeling of belonging. Block's ideas of communities lend power to the individuals that occupy them. With an extremely calm, collected demeanor Block explains the current situation as it relates to community and then shows how community can become more open, more engaging, and more inclusive. Block theorizes that questions provide more openness and potential than answers which often doom us to repeat the past.
The reader is granted an opportunity to fill in the appropriate gaps in order to make Block's ideas fit their needs. The author, Peter Block, attempts to create a more transformative dialog related to the concept of community engagement. Block's model moves away from the more standard approaches that inevitably fuel the dichotomies often present in our communities today toward a model structured around understanding and belonging. Block presents his case in a format that allows the reader to incorporate his model into their community meetings. Most of the literature takes a concept, explains it, provides some examples of how that concept is being used in other places, and then provides a stepping off point for others interested in integrating that concept into the planning efforts within their own jurisdiction.
This level of inclusion is a moral imperative in building community and it prevents efforts that perpetuate the isolation and marginalization. Block also examines advice under a similar light pointing out that advice only limits our potential to the techniques that have been explored by those giving the advice. Instead of centering meetings around providing answers to questions, meetings can focus on presenting the right questions. Block also moves away from illustrating a cookie-cutter technique and instead illustrates the broad concepts that we can employee to create this dialog.
Citizens have control of their own future and aren't represented by "leaders" in a traditional sense. Community: the Structure of Belonging is a great companion to the Organizer's Handbook. "The future is created one room at a time, one gathering at a time." In an effort to expand my own knowledge and to become better connected to the concepts that power the field of planning, I read a respectable amount of planning related literature. I believe that the inclusive model that Block presents in Community: the Structure of Belonging is one that should be examined by community leaders and local government officials. Inclusion is often conspicuously absent in the meetings that shape our community. In reality inclusion is the only path to building true community. Those individuals are "conveners" of meetings and aren't there to direct the conversations taking place, but instead they are there to ensure that the conditions are optimized for the conversations that need to take place. Block reaches a much greater level of detail and provides a graphic explanation as to why each concept is important (down to seemingly minute details such as room arrangement).
Rather than tossing out some tried and true ideas that the reader might be looking for more information on, Block presents a more revolutionary narrative. Block's writing style is approachable, interesting, and extremely motivational. "In communal transformation, leadership is about intention, convening, valuing relatedness, and presenting choices." Block advocates for leaders that create opportunities to bring people together. I was intrigued by the concepts of questions and answers that Block presents. He gives vivid examples of areas where similar ideas have been employed and he shows how his ideas can be merged into our system of community engagement. Block provides the information possible to enable us to "shift our conversations from the problems of community to the possibility of community".
The author presents some radical ideas about community building. I found myself absorbed in understanding how to change my thinking about communities. The book is well written and will become a book for which I will refer to on many occasions.
"Mercy and truth have met together;Righteousness and peace have kissed." -- Psalm 85:10One of my favorite sayings is that "the best help is self-help." That's one of the major themes of this book.I came to the book as someone who favors finding solutions that delight all those affected and as a fan of Peter Block's classic book, Flawless Consulting. If our communities are to become stronger and more nurturing for all, we need to get past arguing about philosophies while nothing gets done. I found myself mentally translating the concepts back into ordinary English to grasp the major points.
It was heavy going. One of the limits of tipping one's cap as an author to so many other writers is that you are limited in how much you can advance the argument into new territory without doing some new homework. I wasn't prepared for what I found in the first few chapters of Community: A dense summary of the views of other authors that feature their jargon and concepts.
As a result, the book comes across as almost like a simplified dissertation, not the kind of work that you may be expecting. I almost gave up before the book's message began to yield to Peter Block's views as exemplified by some examples from the Cincinnati area. This book could have been told in a much more direct, simple, and easier-to-understand way.
There's lots of good advice in the book so I do hope you will persevere. This book can be a helpful contribution to such progress if people read and apply its vision and structural recommendations.
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