New State & Local Policies

Municipal leaders share visions for cities that build community wealth

Feb 5th, 2016

A report from our gathering at the CUNY School of Law

How can cities redeploy their economic development resources to focus on building a more inclusive economy grounded in broad, local ownership? How can policymakers get strategies like worker cooperative development the support and resources needed to reach truly meaningful scale? How can collaborations between communities, local government, and key institutional stakeholders build pathways to economic equity for the people left behind by the traditional trickle-down economic playbook? Read more about Municipal leaders share visions for cities that build community wealth...

City governments building community wealth and cooperative local economies

Jun 23rd, 2014

Exciting news from Jacksonville, Florida, New York City, Austin, Texas and Richmond, Virginia

The past few weeks have seen a flurry of impressive activity at the level of city government, all around policies designed to build community wealth and encourage the growth of cooperative local economies. It's encouraging to see that the work of grassroots developers, local foundations, community activists, and field builders (like ourselves here at the Democracy Collaborative) is beginning to gain a foothold in the world of municipal policy. Read more about City governments building community wealth and cooperative local economies ...

Highlights from the 2014 Jacksonville Community Wealth Building Roundtable

With the encouragement of ICARE (The Interfaith Coalition for Action, Reconciliation and Empowerment), the City of Jacksonville invited The Democracy Collaborative to organize an exploratory conversation around community wealth building as a means of addressing local poverty and economic marginalization. Read more about Highlights from the 2014 Jacksonville Community Wealth Building Roundtable...

Owning the Future: After COVID-19, a new era of community wealth building

Joe Guinan, Sarah McKinley, Jonty Leibowitz and Neil McInroy

Owning Our Future After COVID-19

Ted Howard, Ronnie Galvin, Joe Guinan and Marjorie Kelly

The Case for Community Wealth Building

Joe Guinan and Martin O'Neill

Our broken economic model drives inequality and disempowerment, lining the pockets of corporations while extracting wealth from local communities. How can we reverse this?

Joe Guinan and Martin O’Neill argue for an approach that uses the power of democratic participation to drive equitable development and ensure that wealth is widely shared. They show how this model – Community Wealth Building – can transform our economic system by creating a web of collaborative institutions, from worker cooperatives to community land trusts and public banks, that empower and enrich the many, not the few.

This book is essential reading for everyone interested in building more equal, inclusive, and democratic societies.