Community Wealth Building

👉🏽 This story is developed as part of the Doughnut Economics for Policymakers guide.

Community Wealth Building (CWB) is an economic development approach that builds economies serving local communities. Evidence from pioneering cities shows CWB can enhance job quality and increase incomes while improving mental health and life satisfaction. The approach particularly supports regenerative enterprises that are inclusive, democratic, and reinvest their profits into local economies.

Overview 

CWB seeks to transform extractive economic systems that concentrate wealth and power into distributive ones that give local communities direct ownership and control of their assets.

Governments supporting CWB collaborate with local communities, value-aligned organisations, enterprises, and financial institutions to ensure:

• Inclusive and democratic enterprise: Enterprises and their productive capital are owned and controlled by diverse stakeholders. Examples include worker and consumer cooperatives, social enterprises, and community-owned enterprises.  
• Locally rooted finance: Serving the real economy through publicly and collectively owned financial institutions that support inclusive and democratic enterprise.  
• Fair work: Every worker receives a living wage and meaningful control over their workplace. 
• Just use of land and property: Local communities control land and property assets to build sustainable wealth within their communities.  
• Purpose-driven procurement: Governments and local institutions — such as hospitals, housing associations and universities — procure goods and services in ways that benefit local communities, prioritising inclusive and democratic enterprise. 

Inspired by global movements to address economic inequalities, CWB was first articulated by The Democratic Collaborative in 2005. 

Implementation

Local governments across the USA, UK, Ireland, and other European countries are implementing CWB strategies. At the national level, Scotland embedded CWB within its national economic plan, conducted pilots across six regions and passed the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill in 2026. 

Impacts

The UK city of Preston, the most extensively researched CWB case study, has seen residents experience lower rates of mental health problems, higher life satisfaction, and an 11% increase in median wages. Similarly, cities employing CWB strategies across the USA report enhanced job quality, more inclusive ownership models, and strengthened local economies.

Challenges

• There is insufficient funding to initiate and deliver CWB programmes.
• Time-intensive trust-building is required between governments, communities, businesses, and civil society organisations, especially in areas with historically low trust levels.
• Scaling challenges can be difficult when transitioning from successful local initiatives to national policy implementation, creating tension between locally-led and top-down approaches.
• Changes in government leadership or policy priorities creates uncertain political commitment.

Reference and further reading

• The Democratic Collaborative provides guidance, research, case studies, and practitioner networks for CWB. 
• The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) provides support for CWB and collates case studies for the UK and European contexts. 
• Rose T. C. et al.'s research (2023) explores the mental health and wellbeing impact of CWB in Preston. 
• Kyrstie Brown reflects on opportunities and challenges on CWB implementation in Scotland  (2024). 

• A CWB case study in the Sustainable Prosperity Policy Database.

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