
- Catalyzing a movement to build community wealth
Catalyzing a movement to build community wealth
Community wealth building (CWB) is a system-changing approach to community economic development that works to produce broadly shared economic prosperity, racial equity, and ecological sustainability through the reconfiguration of institutions and local economies on the basis of greater democratic ownership, participation, and control.
The traditional local economic development paradigm, based around using public resources to attract corporations designed to extract wealth and real estate capital designed to displace communities, has been fundamentally broken for some time—but for too long many local policymakers believed this broken game was the only one to play.
A signature achievement of the Democracy Collaborative has been the effective introduction and amplification of the idea that a real alternative exists: community wealth building.
With multiple cities now institutionalizing this paradigm in dedicated offices, and many more incorporating the term and frame into their planning and work, we have created a new sense of radical possibility at the level of local economic development.
Visit our comprehensive resource portal for community wealth builders: Community-Wealth.org