Local Economy

Navigating Collapse Together: Toward Regenerative Public Life

December 4, 2025 Nicole Negowetti, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Ecological Collapse, Local Economy, Transformation

How does change actually happen? This question has followed me across every chapter of my life, from political science and philosophy studies, to graduate work in peacebuilding, into law and food policy, and now into conversations about the polycrisis and metacrisis. Across these settings, I have worked at many scales, always searching for where transformation truly takes root. In the first essay in this series, I explored how food and place reveal the limits of our political binaries. In the second, I examined resistance as an expression of kinship rather than opposition.

In The Year Of The Cooperative, Rural Grocers Find Power In Partnership

October 14, 2025 Jill Dutton, The Packer. Create! Cooperatives, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Grocery Stores, Local Economy

As 2025 marks the United Nations’ International Year of Cooperatives, communities across the U.S. are spotlighting how cooperative models can sustain local economies and strengthen food systems. That mission was front and center during a recent Rural Grocery Initiative webinar that unveiled findings from a two-year project on local sourcing in rural grocery stores. Led by Rial Carver, program director for RGI at Kansas State University, the project was designed to identify innovative ways to help small-town grocers connect with local producers — and, in doing so, keep grocery access alive in communities often bypassed by large retail chains. “Rural grocery stores are anchor institutions,” Carver says in an RGI webinar. “Without them, communities lose out on economic, health and cultural benefits.”

Digital Tools Fuel The Rise Of New ‘Time Exchange’ Solidarity Economies

September 18, 2025 Ella Fassler, Truthout. Create! Alternative Currency, Local Economy, Solidarity Economy, Time Banks

In Kent, Ohio, older white women and immigrant families are forging unexpected connections through a time exchange network. Through time exchanges — sometimes called time banking — members earn time credits by helping others, then redeem them when they need assistance themselves. It’s not barter, or charity; time banking emphasizes reciprocal exchange, recognizing that everyone has something to offer, and that we all need help sometimes. “The time bank usually has a need for healthy young men,” laughed Dawn Albright, president of the Kent Community Time Bank’s board of directors. “I would say, 70 percent of the members are older women.” Younger immigrant members of the time bank often offer assistance with household tasks, like carrying heavy things up the stairs.

Rural Europe Takes Action: Food System Lessons From Marburg

September 17, 2025 ARC2020 Staff, Resilience. Create! Europe, Food Security, Food Sovereignty, Local Economy

Summer’s flowers hang dried in neat bunches around the workshop room of the Ecological Folk High School in Grzybów, as changemakers from France, Germany and Poland gather in the early days of winter 2024. What can rural communities do in the face of the ecological, social and economic crises society faces today, and what role can cross-border exchange between local actors play? These questions marked the coming together of what we have come to call the rural Weimar triangle, a grassroots counterpart – and perhaps challenge to – the high-level diplomatic agreement between the governments of these three countries. Villages, towns and cities, after all, have a lot to offer in response to today’s global challenges.

It’s Time For Community Incubators

August 28, 2025 Elias Crim, Solidarity Hall. Create! Community Incubator, Community organizing, Jobs, Local Economy

Let’s imagine something new has arrived in the neighborhood—a community incubator. It’s a little like a free health club, if you take health in the broadest sense—i.e., including social and economic health. You could think of the incubator as working like a golden funnel turned on its side. It’s wide-open at one end (which most business incubators are not really) but it channels and directs the flow to particular places—like toward a good job. Or even a new business you co-own. The logical home for a program like this is a community hub. You probably know this kind of place. It’s not a community center with yoga classes and senior swimming groups. An authentic community hub feels grassroots-y and kinda political.

A Makerspace Revitalizes Lives, Small Businesses And A Neighborhood

July 22, 2025 Ilana Preuss, Next City. Create! Atlanta, Collective, entrepreneurship, Local Economy

The scent of sawdust greets Gabriella Mooney as she walks through the doors of MASS Collective, heading for an office in the back. It’s a busy weeknight, and Julia Hill – a local master welder, artist and sculptor – is showing a group of five apprentices the tools for MIG welding. At Hill’s cue, they pull down their masks, and the welding torch lights up the room with sparks. As Mooney walks farther into the shop, she hears the grind of the CNC machine from another class of 10 people and sees several young adults refining their creations with the woodshop sander. This space has been like a second home for Mooney, who over the past decade has led the charge to create a neighborhood makerspace and apprenticeship program in downtown Atlanta.

Unpacking The Localism Manifesto: Solving Our Crises From The Bottom Up

July 14, 2025 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Featured Campaign, Podcast - Clearing The FOG Democracy, Governance, Local Economy, popular power, Sustainability

The United States is a failing country. Political leaders at all levels have failed to effectively solve the many crises we face such as the climate crisis, economic insecurity and growing inequality, and the need for affordable housing, education, and health care, and more. Action at the local level, where people have the most control, offers a pathway forward. Clearing the FOG speaks with Michael Shuman, author of A Localism Manifesto, which can be found at The Main Street Journal. Shuman explains how decentralized action works, the principles involved, and how it offers a radical new politics that can heal the current polarization of our society.

This Baltimore Food Incubator Is A Local Economic Engine

July 13, 2025 Ilana Preuss, Next City. Create! Baltimore, entrepreneurship, Jobs, Local Economy

Walking up the stone steps to MFG Toffee & Bark Company a few days ahead of the shop’s grand opening in Baltimore’s Little Italy, chef Sylva Lin inhales the scent of sugar and espresso coming from the kitchen. She’s dropping by to see the fruit of her efforts incubating local food businesses out of Culinary Architecture, the project she launched a decade ago. After a successful career in catering and professional kitchens, Lin’s entrepreneurial spirit was hungry to create a space that would benefit her neighborhood in Baltimore. She didn’t just want to offer interesting foods. She wanted to connect with neighbors, create good-paying jobs and draw foot traffic to support other businesses on the block.

A Localism Manifesto

July 10, 2025 Michael Shuman, The Main Street Journal. Create! Collective Wisdom, Local Economy, Localism, New Economy

Planet Earth is experiencing a five-alarm emergency, yet our political systems are paralyzed and incapable of responding. Unprecedented hurricanes, floods, droughts, fires, and other climate disasters are overwhelming us. Inequality is at a historic high, with 3,000 billionaires shaping our political systems and civil societies. Our once open and vibrant democracies are mutating into dictatorships. Our economies, which were remarkably stable after World War II, continually careen between uncontrolled inflation and unemployment. The list of seemingly insoluble national and global problems is growing.

Future Sustainable Neighbourhood

July 8, 2025 Tony Buck, Resilience. Create! climate crisis, Food Security, Local Economy, Sustainability

Billionaires are building bunkers. What do they know that the “average” person doesn’t? Well, those who pay attention know that multiple Nature tipping points are being either breached, or reached! (The Metacrisis.) Add to that regional conflicts that could go worldwide, and us “average” people may also feel concerned about the near and far-off future. So, I wrote this book, Future Sustainable Neighborhood, for those who can’t afford to buy islands and build bunkers (me included). Anyway, what’s the use of being a billionaire if there’s no food to buy in the market? When one writes, immediate distillation occurs as we zoom in on what needs to be said.

The Potential For Community Energy And Commons In North Wales

June 16, 2025 Dave Darby, Resilience. Organize! Community, Energy, Local Economy, The Commons, Wales

I’d like to find out more about what you’re doing, your ambitions, the barriers you face. You contacted us, so you know that we’re working to build commons in Stroud – to bring assets into community ownership without debt or giving away equity, but with a reasonable return for investors, strong asset locks, and the ability to federate with other projects around the country, and eventually the world. So after this initial interview, I’d like to bring you together with specialists to see where we might collaborate. So first, before we ask about what you’re doing – why are you doing it? What’s your motivation?

Building A Cooperative Economy In Cincinnati

May 29, 2025 John Duda, Inequality.org. Create! Cincinnati, Local Economy, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights

Zeke Coleman’s story says a lot about his worker cooperative, Our Harvest — part of Co-op Cincy’s growing network of worker and community owned businesses. But it also says a lot about America: Before [here] I worked at a chicken processing plant. I got a raise one or two times, at fifty cents, and that was it. I didn’t receive another raise for the next four years. [It’s] different here, because I feel like I’m treated like a person, and it’s not a big corporation where the CEO is making millions and millions and millions while the workers are getting peanuts. Coleman is a worker-owner and the food hub manager at Our Harvest, a worker co-op founded by Co-op Cincy in 2012. Growing healthy food across two urban farms, and sourcing more from community food system projects, Our Harvest connects local growers and producers to customers, creating good jobs along the way.

In Lagos, Nigeria, A Farmers’ Market That Sells All Week

May 7, 2025 Osioke Itseuwa, Platform Cooperativism Consortium. Create! Farmers, Farmers Markets, Food and Agriculture, Local Economy, Nigeria

Every Saturday in Ikoyi, Lagos (Nigeria), a small but steady ritual unfolds behind Nakenoh’s Boulevard mall. TKD Farms Farmers’ Market, founded in 2017, brings together a rotating group of vendors—15 to 20 each week, out of a larger pool of 185. What happens here is more than retail. It’s a working model of what a community-centered economy can look like. This isn’t a typical market. Vendors don’t just show up, set up, and sell. They interact, adapt, and build relationships that carry beyond the day’s sales. The layout changes weekly—no vendor has a fixed spot. This prevents any one business from monopolizing customer flow and encourages everyone to connect with different neighbors each time.

Report: Co-ops Outpace Traditional Grocers In Sales

April 19, 2025 Eric Davis, National Cooperative Business Association. Educate! Cooperatives, Grocery Stores, Local Economy, Organic Farming

Member food co-ops that belong to National Co+op Grocers (NCG) last year achieved same-store sales growth of 4.7 percent, compared to the overall U.S. retail food market of less than 3 percent in 2024. NCG member co-ops also outperformed traditional retailers in shares of local, organic and Fair Trade product sales. In their just-released 2024 Food Co-op Impact Report, NCG credits food co-ops’ community ownership model and commitment to building local supply chains among the factors contributing to their success. The annual report analyzes the collective economic, social and environmental impacts and achievements of its community-owned member food co-ops.

How Eco-Localism Differs From Tariff Terrorism

April 18, 2025 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Create! China, Local Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump Administration

Trade makes many folks materially better off by enabling a local abundance of resources or skills to be shared across a wider area. However, increased trade often worsens economic inequality and depletes and pollutes the environment faster than would otherwise happen. Therefore, eco-localists see trade as a mixed benefit whose unintended negative impacts must be carefully managed. Globalization of trade raises the stakes of both benefits and risks. On the risk side of the ledger, taken to the extreme, it leads to a world in which everything is for sale, all resources are depleted, pollution is everywhere, labor is exploited to the maximum degree, and everything is owned by a tiny number of super-rich investors and entrepreneurs.

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