How to bring wealth to left-behind groups

Policymakers pay sporadic lip service to the importance of community, but meanwhile communities decline as living entities and social practices. David Cameron’s Big Society policy, for example, attempted to delegate responsibility for the bulk of social goods to communities without providing them with the means or powers to succeed. As we show in our book Act Now, activities of house-building, management and maintenance are productively managed by councils and local cooperatives. Building up community wealth ought to underpin all public sector activity and reform of governance.