ABSTRACT
The knowledge of community development consists more of rules of thumb based on trial-and-error practice than of tested generalizations unified by a consistent conceptual scheme. This chapter focuses on the sequence which communities seem to follow as they develop their component institutions. Although this sequence takes diverse concrete forms in different places, it is always unidimensional, cumulative, and appears to lead in the direction of greater participation in the national social structure, regardless of the political ideology that may be present. If community growth is essentially institutional differentiation and the articulation of more subgroups with the national social structure, it would be surprising indeed if large populations were not associated with such growth. Community growth follows a single unidimensional path because increasing involvement in the urban structure is possible only if certain organizational prerequisites have been met.
