Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up

Harnessing Real-World Experience for Transformative Change

Anthony Flaccavento

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780813167596, 9780813167343
• eBook ISBN: 9780813167350
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

The global economy has witnessed important changes in recent years. In the United States, enterprising communities have transitioned from tobacco farming to growing organic produce, from extractive fishing to vertical farming, from nonrenewable energy consumption to the implementation of solar cooperatives—and have transformed from impoverished neighborhoods into green development zones. Yet these promising achievements remain a small part of the total economy and are largely ignored by policy makers, pundits, and economists.

In Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real World Experience for Transformative Change, Anthony Flaccavento introduces readers to the innovators who are creating thriving, locally based economies and provides a road map for others who are interested in doing the same. He demonstrates that, despite the success of local initiatives like farmers' markets and clean energy cooperatives, true and lasting change of this type stalls without the appropriate discussion and implementation of public policies that define their lasting impact. He shows how active citizens can spur essential changes, generate community capital, increase civic dialogue, and foster sustainability efforts.

Flaccavento skillfully combines economic analysis and public policy recommendations with practical solutions. His call to collective action will appeal to scholars, entrepreneurs, policymakers, community activists, environmentalists, and all citizens passionate about the health of their communities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Bill McKibben
• Introduction: Economic Transitions in Surprising Places
• 1. What’s Wrong with What We’ve Got? Rising Tides, Trickle Down, and Other Economic Myths
• 2. Renewing Households and Communities: From Consumptive Dependence to Productive Resilience
• 3. Unleashing Local Living Economies: From Trickle-Down Problems to Bottom-Up Solutions
• 4. Building Broadly Based and Durable Prosperity: From Concentrated Wealth and Widespread Insecurity to Worker Ownership and Community Capital
• 5. Taking Sustainability to Scale: From a Thousand Flickers of Light to Networks of Learning, Doing, and Change
• 6. Rebuilding a Meaningful Public Debate: From Debilitating Corporate Media to Energizing Civic Conversations
• 7. Transforming Politics from the Bottom Up: Unleashing a Community-Based Politics of Engagement to Overcome the Lobbyists and Moneyed Elites
• Conclusion: Creating a New Story, from the Bottom Up
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index