While many cities and communities rely on a “smokestack chasing” approach to economic development, others are starting to focus on a new approach to economic development that centers people and place. Instead of measuring growth by just revenue, this approach, coined “community wealth-building,” strengthens the local economy through broader democratic ownership and control of business and jobs.

Across the political spectrum, conventional wisdom holds that technology and finance remain the greatest obstacles to moving society beyond fossil fuel dependency. Yet, neither is the real reason why progress on climate action has stalled for decades. Solar applications alone have the technical potential to provide 100 times more electricity than the United States currently consumes, as conclu

From Ted Howard, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and Marjorie Kelly, author of The Divine Right of Capital, and Owning our Future, The Making of a Democratic Economy is a clarion call for a movement ready to get serious about transforming our economic system.

This month (December 2016), two million readers of Smithsonian magazine opened their copy of the publication to find an article, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dale Maharidge, on innovative approaches to deal with poverty in the United States.  Among the three models written about in depth was the example of the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio

Community choice aggregation allows a local government to bundle all of the energy users in an area and provide their energy needs through a publicly owned local institution, leaving the incumbent investor-owned utility to solely operate the poles and wires.

Energy democracy—a new idea from the ranks of community organizers, labor, and renewable energy advocates who see our current energy system as broken and destructive—seeks to take on the political and economic change needed to tackle the energy transition holistically.

Traditional economic development wastes billions of dollars of taxpayer money to subsidize the profit of corporations with no loyalty to the communities who foot the bill. But there’s an alternative...