Community: The Structure of Belonging

This practical guide to building stable, healthy, and inclusive communities offers an antidote to today’s polarizing culture of isolation.

With the increasing violence in our culture, the widening ideological divides, and the growing gap in economic well-being, a deeper sense of community is desperately needed. But even as we acknowledge the need to build community, the typical ways we engage people, civically and organizationally, remain essentially unchanged. In Community, Peter Block explores how authentic community can emerge from fragmentation and offers practical steps and strategies we can use to foster this transformation.

This updated and revised edition draws on a decade of putting Block’s ideas into practice. New examples show that community building can be a more powerful way to address social problems than more traditional policies and programs. And encouragingly, Block demonstrates how simple positive transformation can be, once we decide it is essential.

Peter Block is a citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed by Block to build the skills outlined in his books. He is the author of Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Empowered Manager, and The Answer to How Is Yes. He is the recipient of the American Society for Training and Development Award for Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance and the Association for Quality and Participation President’s Award. He is also a member of Training magazine’s HRD Hall of Fame.