Detroit is a community transformed.  In the lifespan of some of its residents it has downshifted from being one of America’s largest, wealthiest, and most innovative cities to one of its fastest shrinking, poorest, and sclerotic places. A recent study found that a third of the residential parcels in the city—roughly 100,000 lots—are vacant or abandoned buildings. And Mayor Dave Bing, strapped with huge budget deficits, has committed to divide the city into neighborhoods that will get city services and investment because they are still viable and those that won't because they have emptied out.

In the same 50-60 years of Detroit’s steep decline, San Jose grew from a community of fewer than 100,000 to a city of more than 1 million (bigger than Detroit)—and a global center of the computer industry.  It, too, is a place transformed.

Detroit is not without its bright spots and San Jose is not without its problems. But by any measure, these places are not what they used to be in some fundamental ways. It’s not just their fortunes that have changed; some underlying capacities—the things that make a community what it is and what it can become—have changed.

It can be argued that the transformation of these two cities was more accidental, a matter of circumstances, than intentional. San Jose boomed thanks to the presence of university researchers and entrepreneurs who invented the computer industry. And Detroit deflated due to a combination of racism that led to “white flight” from the city to the suburbs and the competitive failure of the automobile manufacturers concentrated in the city.  Sometimes, you might say, transformation just happens; it results from the dynamic ebb and flow of social relations and the creative destruction of capitalist economies, especially driven by the arrival of disruptive technologies.

But the “transformation just happens” explanation is certainly not the full truth. Intentionality also shapes every community’s arc, even if only in the form of willful neglect. Local public policies may aid or combat racial segregation and may support one industry’s presence at the expense of others. Civic leaders may choose to invest their influence and funds in, say, the arts and not in education. The heads of local systems, such as transportation or education, may ignore the fact that their systems produce mediocre results or they may push for dramatic improvement. Outside entities—the federal government or absentee corporations—may decide to steer investments in ways that deny or provide important resources to a community.

What does it mean to say that a community seeks intentionally to transform itself? How does intentional transformation happen? And what does it have to do, if anything, with social innovation?

These days the advocates of community transformation have as many as four things in mind that should be transformed:

1. A community’s economic capacity and performance—transformation to succeed in a globally competitive, “flat” Knowledge Economy.
2. A community’s energy and environmental sustainability—transformation to dramatically reduce consumption and production of carbon that contributes to climate change.
3. A community’s level and concentration of persistent poverty, especially that of “vulnerable” children—transformation to dramatically reduce poverty and bad outcomes for poor, minority children.
4. A community’s role within a larger region of communities—transformation to increase collaboration and equity among places within regions.

These are transformational matters because they require communities to change their underlying culture--the way people in places think, feel, and behave. A community with an "old economy" mindset perceives and interprets the world differently from a community with a "new economy" mindset--and therefore acts differently too. The same is true about consumption of energy and natural resources, or poverty within the community, or relationships among communities: certain ideas, attitudes, attachments, and habits pervade in the community and generate certain actions, but when they are changed, different actions occur.

Changing the fundamental culture of a community depends on unleashing three dynamics in a place:  

1. Shared vision and goals. The creation of a new collective wish/vision/hope for the future of the whole community.
2. Social engagement. Development of new and/or strengthened social relations—bonds among group and bridges between groups--based on awareness of interdependence within the community, caring about other parts of the community, and trust/reciprocity across the community.
3. Systemic improvement. The expression of high standards for the basic needs/competencies/opportunities for people in the community to become self-sufficient, productive, and generative--and the continuous improvement of systems toward those standards.