Community Wealth Building: a strategic tool for strengthening communities & municipal budgets

Public services are intrinsically related to the health of local economies. As such, policymakers, public service unions and civil society have an opportunity to envision and promote a more holistic and creative approach about the role that public services can play in inclusive local economic development and communities.

Specifically, while local public services around the world already play a major role in fostering inclusive, sustainable local economic development, they can be more intentionally linked to an emerging, progressive paradigm in economic development called Community Wealth Building (CWB), which has the potential to strenghten municipal fiscal systems, local public service funding ,all while enabling decent work creation. Thomas H. Hanna, Research Director, The Democracy Collaborative