By Stacey Sutton (University of Illinois-Chicago)

In September 2022, the City of Chicago announced the Community Wealth Building Initiative (CWBI)—a $15 million federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funded program to support community-owned and controlled businesses, land, housing, and commercial property, particularly in historically disinvested Black and Latine communities across the city. Although modest compared to former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $750 million INVEST South/West initiative, or the city’s nearly $2 billion ARPA allocation, the CWBI represents a substantial ideological, epistemological, and methodological departure from conventional economic development which have consistently failed to deliver economic benefits to Black, Latine, and low-income residents. Chicago’s CWBI offers a replicable framework for enabling community wealth. It is part of an ascendant movement for equitable development and solidarity economies that aims to expand the power of cooperative enterprises, normalize community ownership and control of neighborhood assets, and promote democratic governance and collective decision-making as viable alternatives to the extraction of neoliberal racial capitalism. After decades of public and private sector disinvestment from Chicago’s Black and Latine communities on the South and West Sides of the city, community wealth building (CWB) – through worker cooperatives, community land trusts (CLTs), permanently affordable housing cooperatives, community investment vehicles (CIVs) – is creating meaningful pathways to economic democracy, housing stability, revitalized commercial corridors, shared ownership, community planning and power building. 

By Benjamin Tsai (Nexus), Sarah Wang (Center for Economic Democracy), and Nairuti Shastry (Center for Economic Democracy)

Within any social movement, achieving its political goals may involve different levels of engagement with the government apparatus, or the state. When it comes to Community Wealth Building (CWB), we know that the support of local and state governments is especially critical for the long-term success of CWB efforts. Not only can the state pass legislation and provide financial resources to create a more enabling environment for CWB activity, but local governments can also exercise soft power by convening key stakeholders and preserving institutional memory of projects past.

By Fiona Scott (NHS Tayside), Gerard McCartney (University of Glasgow), Neil McInroy (The Democracy Collaborative), and Margaret Douglas (University of Glasgow)

Economic policy and activity are key determinants of health and health inequalities. They shape the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, as well as the distribution of income and wealth across society (McCartney et al. 2019; WHO 2024). Economic policy and development activity can improve population health through income, employment status, and job quality (Naik et al. 2020). However, it is increasingly recognized that traditional extractive models of economic growth and the resultant patterns of wealth do not deliver prosperity for all (Mazzucato et al. 2022). 

In this context Scotland has adopted a “Wellbeing Economy” approach as a new economic system that prioritizes human and planetary needs rather than economic growth (WEAll n.d.). This recognizes that accelerating economic growth has adverse consequences including ecological crises and inequalities (Hensher et al. 2024), without necessarily improving health (Brook et al. 2024). Community Wealth Building (CWB) has been proposed as a means to realize a wellbeing economy in Scotland (Scottish Government 2022c) and as such positively improve health impacts. In February 2026 the Scottish Parliament passed the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill which will place legal duties to embed CWB in public sector bodies in Scotland.