The issues and problems facing local governments over the next 20 years are complex. Understanding and solving these problems will require specialized roles and skills not common among urban management today. Managers of the future must have the capacity to broker, negotiated, and lead unobtrusively. To achieve this, administrators and elected officials should engage in joint training and problem solving, support groups should be developed and nurtured, and techniques for rigorous and thorough recruitment of managers should be utilized.