Community Wealth Building – Policy mapping and analysis
Community Wealth Building (CWB) is a place-based approach to economic transformation that seeks to ensure wealth is generated, retained and shared more fairly within communities. Through its five pillars, land, shared ownership, workforce, spending and finance, CWB provides a practical framework for delivering inclusive and sustainable development.
Our research explores how Community Wealth Building can help operationalise the ambitions of the Thriving Glasgow Portrait. By mapping CWB priorities against the 44 Thriving Glasgow Definitions, we identified opportunities to generate benefits across multiple social, economic and environmental outcomes simultaneously.
We also examined the alignment between Glasgow City Council's Economic Strategy and CWB priorities. Our analysis found that many existing actions already contribute to systems change, but that stronger alignment across policy areas could unlock additional benefits and reinforce progress towards reducing family poverty, supporting public service reform and creating a more inclusive economy.
This work demonstrates how Community Wealth Building can act as a unifying framework, connecting diverse strategies and interventions to achieve outcomes that are greater than the sum of their parts. By strengthening links across systems, CWB has the potential to accelerate progress towards a thriving, equitable and sustainable Glasgow.