Theme: Political Economy | Content Type: Journal article

Building Everyday Wealth for Britain's Communities: A Labour Alternative to Levelling Up?

Sarah Longlands

nattanan-kanchanaprat-money-growth

Nattanan Kanchanaprat

| 1 min read

Community wealth building provides an important counterpoint to the orthodoxy of place based economic policy in the UK. It puts forward a framework for economic change which shows that local areas can intervene effectively to build wealth from within so that they are less reliant upon extractive forms of economic development. Instead, wealth building within a community is about recognising the wealth that already exists in an area and intervening to encourage that wealth to flow more readily, particularly from capital to labour. This article explores the background to the development of community wealth building in the UK and its connection with the debate on the everyday economy. It finds that there is a close alignment between the objectives of building wealth and the everyday economy, particularly in areas which not only feel ‘left behind’, but arguably, who have been kept behind by a policy regime which has actively dismantled their sense of place, agency and identity, and in turn, devalued the role and purpose of the businesses and economy that already exists, in favour of elusive ‘growth’ and/or ‘pioneer’ sectors.

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Volume 94, Issue 3

Latest journal

Volume 94, Issue 3

Includes a commentary by Colin Crouch on the dark heart of today's Conservative party, an article by Stewart Lansley tracing the history of ‘crowding out’, and its use as a justification for austerity and state deflation; and Tim Vlandas and Kate Alexander-Shaw debating the political economy of age. In our reports and surveys section, Deborah Mabbett asks where next for curbing London's emissions? The issue also includes a selection of book reviews such as Andrew Gamble on The Culture of Accountability: A Democratic Virtue by Gianfranco Pasquino and Riccardo Pelizzo, and Leila Simona Talani on Europe's Coming of Age by Loukas Tsoukalis.

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