The Civic Wealth Way: Why Community Can’t Be Outsourced
Allan Connolly MICDA
Civic Wealth Practitioner | Founder of Kommuniti HQ | Strategic Advisor and Speaker on Community-Led Development, Belonging and Systems Change
May 19, 2026
Edition #20: A continuation of The Resilient Way Newsletter, evolved into The Civic Wealth Way – “Turning Resilience into Civic Impact”
One of the great mistakes of modern life is that we have outsourced too much of what used to belong to community.
We outsourced care.
We outsourced housing.
We outsourced local enterprise.
We outsourced neighbourly connection.
We outsourced responsibility to government, charities, agencies, markets, consultants, and distant systems.
And then we wonder why people feel disconnected, disempowered, and distrustful.
This is not an argument against government.
It is not an argument against business.
It is not an argument against the not-for-profit sector.
It is an argument against communities being reduced to passive clients, passive consumers, passive ratepayers, passive tenants, passive voters, and passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere.
Because when people are only treated as service users, customers, or data points, something human is lost.
And when too much local value flows out of a place, something civic is lost too.
That is where The Civic Wealth Way begins.
It asks a simple but uncomfortable question:
What would change if local people were not just consulted, serviced or managed, but became active participants in creating the wealth, wellbeing and belonging of their own communities?
Not wealth in the narrow sense.
Not just money.
Civic Wealth means the things that make a place genuinely stronger:
Trust.
Belonging.
Local enterprise.
Shared assets.
Practical participation.
Neighbourly connection.
Community-owned infrastructure.
Housing that serves people, not just portfolios.
Local businesses that are supported by local people.
Social enterprises that are part of an ecosystem, not isolated heroes.
Councils that see residents as partners, not just problems to manage.
This is where I believe the next great social change conversation needs to go.
We do not need more endless debate between capitalism and socialism while communities continue to hollow out in the middle.
We need practical models that help local people build, own, share, steward, and benefit from the places they call home.
That is the Civic Wealth Way.
It is not about waiting for government to fix everything.
It is not about pretending markets will magically care for everyone.
It is about rebuilding the civic muscle between the two.
Because the future of community wellbeing will not be delivered to us.
It will have to be built by us.
And the people who live in a place must become more than stakeholders.
They must become stewards.
That is the shift I believe is coming.
And, more importantly, that is the shift I believe we now have to help create, for the Wellbeing of the communities we have chosen to call home.
Not simply as passive residents.
Not only as consumers, ratepayers, tenants, service users or voters.
But as civic citizens.
People willing to participate in the life, strength, and future of the places we live.
And if this thinking unsettles the old categories a little, maybe that is no bad thing.
Because the same thinking that created the current disconnection will not rebuild belonging, trust, local ownership, or shared wellbeing.
That will require different thinking.
And different participation.
So my question is this:
What would change if more of us stopped asking only what our community can provide for us – and started asking what we can build, steward, and strengthen together?
#CivicWealth #AssetBasedCommunityDevelopment #CommunityWealthBuilding #CommunityCapital #CommunityledDevelopment