Your say on developing a community wealth building policy

What we’re doing

Community wealth building is an approach to economic development that aims to create an inclusive, sustainable economy.

We invite you to share your insights into the principles of community wealth building, and how they could be applied in Sydney to reduce inequality and ensure more people share in the city’s prosperity.

Your ideas on how economic success should be defined and how the City of Sydney can contribute to building and retaining wealth in our local area will help shape a policy to be developed in 2022.

Through this process, we also hope potential partners and collaborators will come forward to join us in applying the community wealth building approach in Sydney.

Why we’re doing this

In July 2020, Council resolved to investigate how the principles of community wealth building could be developed into a policy that informed how the City of Sydney operates and our approach to economic development.

We will also investigate the potential of setting up a network of partner organisations to increase the benefits of community wealth building.

Community wealth building

Community wealth building is built around 5 principles:

• Building the generative economy: diversifying the economy and including more ‘for-purpose’ businesses
• Progressive procurement: maximising expenditure from major institutions with additional social, environmental, and local benefits, supporting jobs and businesses
• Employment: addressing employment issues in the local area
• Land and property: using assets held by key institutions as a platform for generating community wealth or benefits.
• Finance: harnessing capital from within the community and aligning capital with broad environmental and social goals of the community.

Collaborative actions of major institutions are key to the success of the model.

This discussion paper is the first step to develop the policy. It includes an overview of the 5 principles, case studies, recent actions we’ve taken, and possible future actions to support applying this economic model in Sydney. It is not a comprehensive action plan but is intended to prompt discussion and help shape an economic policy.

Things to consider:

• How could this model be applied in the City of Sydney area?
• What elements of this approach are most relevant to our local area?

We invite you to explore the discussion paper and complete our short online form to register your interest and tell us your ideas.

Register your interest