Shape of Community : realization of human potential

The work by Chermayeff and Tzonis is, to my knowledge, the first attempt to approach on a global level the problem of the shape of community. 'Global' here is meant not merely geographically, but essentially methodologically. As someone who is professionally acquainted with the unpenetrable intricacies of complex, strongly interacting systems, I found it a delight to follow the two authors separating with skill sixty crucial issues from a tangle of controversies and misconceptions, and still keeping the relations between these issues alive.

Merely to present these issues is a major feat, for where is one to begin, where to end in the description of a system whose parts are structurally and functionally interrelated; where B is understood when A is grasped, but A, in turn, is only clear in terms of B?

The authors succeeded in presenting the complex relations of issues by developing an appropriate anatomy of commitments which are located in the same way as atoms at the lattice points in a complex crystal. Their vision of this structure is so consistent that they can keep the reader constantly informed about certain features which may move out of sight here, but reappear there. The relation of issues in the structure of commit ments determines the functional part of the author's vision, a set of crucial actions. These three, issues, commitments and actions, are complementary, genera ting a concept of community with the necessary and sufficient richness to permit the realization of human potential in times to come. The structure of the book. The analogy of a crystal. How the reader can move back and forth in the book, between bundles of issues.