Welcome!

About Communities of the Future

The Communities of the Future (COTF) is an evolving network of people and organizations throughout the U.S. and other countries that are working in collaboration to develop new concepts of governance, economic development, leadership, and education/learning for a fast-paced, interconnected, and increasingly complex society.

COTF distinguishes the ideas of reforming change and transformational change. Most of today's work in local communities is based on making existing ideas and present assumptions more efficient—reforming change. COTF emphasizes community research and development to create new assumptions, concepts, methods and techniques—transformational change. To learn more, visit Transformational Change Highlights

COTF is unique in its approach to community transformation to the 21st century. As a result of significant experience in understanding the limitations of strategic planning in community development, COTF has pioneered a parallel concept of adaptive planning to develop longer term capacities for transformation. This concept emphasizes critical Capacities for Transformation which do not presently exist in most local communities:

• A Futures Context - To think about and resolve present and future issues.
• Fixed and Wireless Electronic Infrastructure - For real time information flow.
• Master Capacity Buildering - A master capacity builder is a new type of leader who is able to help seed transformative concepts and methods in order to create a culture of transformation in local areas.
• Biological and Ecological Planning (Adaptive Planning) - Used to develop parallel processes that will support both the implementation of short-term, outcome- based projects, as well as emergence of longer-term capacities for transformation.
• 21st Century Knowledge and Skills - Enabling citizenry to engage in
  futures generative dialogue, transformational learning and building of 21st century neighborhood academies in order to see connections among totally different factors and ideas.

COTF works with communities to understand how the new ideas of complexity, chaos and ecology can be applied as principles in developing new small networks of interested people working in collaboration to create innovative community research and development projects.

Key Ideas

• A commitment to transformative values at the personal, organizational, and community level
• An openness to new ideas
• Determination to work and think in a futures context, rather than clinging to the past
• An emphasis on parallel processes for all projects and efforts
• Continuous innovation and a focus on entrepreneurship
• Connective “and/both” thinking
• Development and support of process/transformative leadership
• An emphasis on transformational learning and learning communities
• A willingness to collaborate and to help others succeed

Services

Contact us if you think your community would be interested in being involved with one of the specific COTF community research and development projects or would like to tailor your own idea based on some of the capabilities above.

We are always interested in talking to members of local rural and urban communities throughout the world who want to work with us to build capacities for transformation for their communities.

Thank you for visiting Communities of the Future.

Rick Smyre
President, Communities of the Future