The community trends listed here may or may not impact your particular community. It is however a good list to begin deeper discussion and research about whether or not there is a readiness to respond to emerging trends.
- Amalgamation of local governments and institutions
- Aging population
- Biomimicry (innovation inspired by nature)
- Built Environments - understanding the impact of our environment on health
- Changing volunteer profiles (more seniors with more time and a need for meaning in their lives, fewer youth involved)
- Citizens have less affinity to their geographic community
- Continued urbanization
- Creative Communities (places that attract a class of workers whose function requires thinking or creating and thus can choose where they live)
- Data Overload
- Development of Brownfields (abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities)
- Devolution of services to lower levels of government and the voluntary sector
- Diminished influence of senior governments
- Ecological Footprints/Green Building
- EduTourism/EcoTourism
- Experiential hedonism (search for happiness through experience)
- Free time available in smaller segments
- Genuine Progress Index/Green Accounting (replacing Gross Domestic Product as better ways of measuring what matters in communities)
- Greater divide between 'haves' and 'have nots'
- Greater flexibility of gender, roles and equity of sexes
- Increased interest in environmental stewardship
- Increased substance abuse (drugs) for diversion or to reduce stress
- Increasing ethnic diversity
- Influence of technology contributing to a 'global village'
- Easier to act on intrinsic need to be involved in a community of interest
- Jobs are not a fixed list of tasks but instead a list of targeted outcomes
- Learning Communities/Lifelong Learning becoming more important
- Less trust in government and large institutions
- Longer period for retirement
- More flexible work time and place
- More people with special needs
- More desire to be involved in decision-making
- Nature Deficit Disorder
- People feel stressed/rushed
- Pressure to seek alternative work models
- Processing speeds and power will continue to increase dramatically so that multi-media interfaces will become easier
- Public focus on achieving results vs. delivery of services
- Reduction in public sector spending
- 'Sandwich' generation (those squeezed between caring for elderly parents as well as their own children)
- Sedentary youth lifestyles impacting health
- Smaller households
- Smart Growth/Infilling in communities
- More interest in spiritual quests
- Systems Thinking (recognition of the need for a 360 degree perspective i.e. of an organization or community)
- Weakening concept of the stand alone 'professional'
- Wireless communication technology will allow people to communicate from anywhere
- Youth un/underemployment resulting in youth poverty