What is Community Wealth Building?

Community wealth building is a local economic development strategy that focuses on building collaborative, inclusive, sustainable, and democratically controlled economies. Unlike traditional economic models that rely on tax incentives and public-private partnerships—often enabling profit extraction by large corporations with no loyalty to local areas—community wealth building prioritises local ownership and control.

Community wealth building supports democratic collective ownership of the economy through various models, such as:

• Worker cooperatives
• Community land trusts
• Community development financial institutions
• Anchor procurement strategies (leveraging public institutions to support local businesses)
• Municipal and local public enterprises
• Public and community banking

At its core, community wealth building empowers local communities to take ownership of their economies, ensuring economic benefits are shared broadly and rooted locally.

Readings and Resources

• Guinan, J. & O’Neill, M. (2020) The case for community wealth building / Joe Guinan, Martin O’Neill. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
• Guinan, J. and O’Neill, M. (2019) “From community wealth-building to system change,” IPPR Progressive Review, 25(4), pp. 382–392. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12130.
• https://www.democracycollaborative.org/community-wealth-building
• https://cles.org.uk/community-wealth-building-in-practice/community-wealth-building-places/community-wealth-building-case-studies/