Community Wealth Building

By Nairuti Shastry (Center for Economic Democracy) and Neil McInroy (The Democracy Collective)

As we write this introductory essay to the Community Wealth Bulding (CWB) special feature for the Urban Affairs Forum in the winter of 2026, we are deep in the throes of what Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian activist Norma Wong (2024) calls “collective acceleration”: a sort of high-octane current whose bullish momentum drives us toward ever uncertain futures. In just the past year, we have seen the acceleration of climate events, an untenable rise in the cost of basic household items, a continued attack on the  administrative state, and the ruthlesslessness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in places from Minnesota to Los Angeles to our nation’s capital.  

This context is a wider reaction to the polycrisis of climate, ecological, economic, social and democratic issues. And whilst universal, it is in the urban setting where these crises are most virulently experienced. As the crucibles of humanity that betray both the joys and ills of our world, cities bring to light the core of this crisis: an extractive political economy that concentrates wealth and thus power among the few at the expense of the many. The result? An economic system that degrades land, exploits labor, and extracts capital in unsustainable ways.