Community Wealth

Local Project

Community wealth building is a way of developing local economies in order to keep more of the wealth generated locally within that community. Many local economies are dependent on large businesses and supply chains that come from far away. These can extract wealth, maximizing returns to distant shareholders. Instead, community wealth building seeks to help people to generate and hold wealth in their local area, businesses and community groups. This can include efforts to increase democratic ownership of the local economy, such as setting up co-operatives, and using the power of public institutions to direct money and resources into local companies.

Community wealth building strategies have increased the share of public money being invested and used for local businesses, services and projects. They can make local economies more democratic by giving communities more control over improvements to their neighborhoods.

While community wealth building has gained traction in Europe and the United States, it is a blanket term that covers long-standing approaches to local economic development used throughout history and across the Majority World, like worker co-operatives, community-owned spaces and stakeholder banks.

Community wealth building is a practical approach that can be adopted under the initiative of both local governments and communities.

Austerity, the cutting of local government budgets, and continuing to prioritize spending on, and policy incentives for, large companies and faraway supply chains can be a barrier to community wealth building efforts.

Gameplay Notes

When you take this action, draw 1, 2, or 3 additional Local Project cards if you have 2–3, 4–5, or 6 or more Infrastructure tags in this card's stack.

You may do this once per round.