Visions for the Future

Visions for the Future

Community wealth building

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.

What Values Are at Stake?

Community wealth building is deeply rooted in the values of democracy and equality, with a strong emphasis on local control.

  • Democracy: Advocates of community wealth building argue that true democracy extends beyond politics into the economic realm. Community wealth building argues that for society to be genuinely democratic, people must have the power to shape their local economies and exercise real control over their economic future. It challenges the technocratic idea that economic systems are separate from democratic life, insisting instead that communities should own, control, and direct the enterprises that affect their lives.
  • Equality: This approach seeks to create economies that are not only fairer in terms of wealth distribution but also more inclusive. Equality here is not just about reducing income inequality but also about fostering a society where everyone can live together as equals. This means creating:
    • Decent, well-paying jobs to replace exploitative, low-wage employment.
    • Stronger social bonds to reduce the distance between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

The aspiration is to build economies where individuals are not bystanders to economic forces but active participants, shaping outcomes in a way that benefits everyone.

To What Extent Is Community Wealth Building Systemic Change?

Advocates of community wealth building argue it represents a transformative shift in how economies are structured—systemic change that begins at the local level.

By focusing on place-based solutions and democratic participation, it offers an alternative to economic systems shaped by market forces and corporate interests. Communities battered by decades of disinvestment, deindustrialisation, and displacement can rebuild their economies through new institutions and approaches designed to produce sustainable, lasting, and democratic outcomes.

Key aspects of systemic change include:

  • Moving from the impersonal logic of the market to democratic decision-making.
  • Creating alternative ownership models—worker cooperatives, community enterprises, and public institutions accountable to citizens.
  • Decolonising current democratic institutions by bringing economic power under local democratic control.

However, given the entrenchment of globalisation, some critics would push back on the idea that community wealth building is a systemic vision.

Ultimately, community wealth building lays the groundwork for a more democratic and equitable economy, using bottom-up principles to shift toward a fairer, more sustainable economic system.

Readings and Resources