Community wealth building (CWB) is a philosophy and approach to local economic development that is packaged into a coherent and marketable model. CWB is gaining traction in the UK.
CWB aims to promote economic activity and investment in local areas and enable equitable economic growth. It opposes the idea of extractive economics where wealth is taken out of communities by national and multinational corporations. It rather promotes generative economics and embraces concepts like localism and new municipalism. This involves prioritising local matters and increasing the autonomy of local municipalities or councils.
The Scottish Government has embraced this concept and is busy embedding it in policy.
This article introduces CWB and reflects on its value and limitations. It will be interesting to anyone involved in sustaining and growing a local economy. I wrote it to contribute to the discussion about CWB.