Local economies at a crossroads
How do we build an economy designed for people, planet and long-term resilience?
A quick note: If you don’t live in Boulder, Colorado, you might think this post isn’t relevant to you, but it is. Cities around the country are experiencing the same challenges that my town is, and the suggestions I make in this piece can likely be applied to the places where you live.
Last week, three businesses I love in my community closed (Breadworks), announced a closure (Sanitas Brewing), or were sold (Upslope). Three, in only seven days. The reasons vary, and many of them will never be fully known except to the owners themselves. But the impacts are already felt. Workers are facing unemployment, nonprofit organizations are losing sources of food and donations, and residents are losing third places that anchored their weeks and shaped relationships. With each closure, Boulder’s social fabric weakens.
What’s striking is how little we talk about these ripple effects. It’s wild, really, how quietly we accept that economic decisions made in isolation can destabilize entire networks of people, families, and community life. These closures aren’t simply the end of individual businesses. They’re signals that our economic system, here in Boulder and across the country, is working against us. They are the inevitable outcomes of an economy organized around extraction rather than resilience. That might sound hyperbolic, but it’s true. Some of these businesses scaled too quickly, trying to satisfy investor demands or social expectations. Some of them were likely hit by the high costs that our federal legislators are creating as they plunder the country’s public goods.
Local officials are considering how to strengthen our economy, but they are relying on approaches of the past—waiting for a winning football season to buoy tax revenue or for innovation to miraculously repair everything that’s fraying. With this approach, we will keep recreating the same conditions that brought us here: historic inequality, ecological collapse, and fragile communities.
Boulder prides itself on innovation. But we need a new kind of innovation. Not a new marketing campaign to attract tourists, or a corporate monopoly to move into our town, or an incubator pumping out more companies benefiting a few shareholders.
We need economic transformation.
A framework for Boulder: Doughnut economics and shared ownership
Imagine if Boulder became one of the first U.S. cities to fundamentally reimagine how its economy works—not as a machine for producing wealth for a few, but as a living system designed to meet human needs while staying within the limits of the planet.
The Doughnut Economics framework, created by Kate Raworth, gives us a map. It asks communities to design economies that allow everyone to thrive (the “social foundation”) without overshooting ecological limits (the “ecological ceiling”). More and more cities—from Amsterdam to Portland—are adopting this model.
Boulder is uniquely positioned to do the same. We already have the values, the research institutions, the civic infrastructure, and the entrepreneurial drive. What we lack is a unified vision.
A doughnut-aligned Boulder would:
Measure success not through GDP or job quantity but through wellbeing, equity, emissions reduction, and regenerative development.
Prioritize circular systems, local production, and climate resilience.
Shift business development incentives away from extraction and toward models that generate community value.
And, it would expand shared ownership.
Worker cooperatives, employee ownership trusts, ESOPs, and community-owned businesses are not fringe ideas. They’re proven pathways to more stable businesses, higher job satisfaction, stronger communities, and the distribution of wealth. In fact, the Boulderado, which was sold to an outside buyer earlier this year, was originally community-owned.
In Boulder, despite interest, very few businesses have taken this step. Namaste Solar stands as an iconic exception—a nationally respected cooperative modeling a different approach. But one example is not enough. Boulder needs hundreds of these.
A future Boulder economy, resilient, distributed, participatory, must bake in shared ownership as a core strategy, not an afterthought.
Why this matters now
Boulder is facing a demographic and economic cliff. We have a rapidly aging business owner population. Many owners want to retire. Many don’t have succession plans. And right now, the default path is either closure or sale to private equity—both of which usually lead to layoffs, loss of local control, and the disappearance of community institutions.
Just last week’s closures make visible that without intervention, without new models, we will lose more beloved businesses, more community anchors, and more opportunities for workers to build stable lives here.
We need a vision that meets this moment.
Here’s my crack at a five-year vision for Boulder’s economic transformation
A cultural shift toward community stewardship
In five years, it should be normal, expected even, for Boulder residents to talk about transitioning business ownership to employees or community members. We should see it as a civic value: keeping businesses rooted here, owned here, and benefiting the people who work in and are served by them.
A citywide response to the aging owner crisis
Boulder should have a publicly supported, well-known program that helps business owners explore employee ownership or mission-aligned community succession—not at the last minute, but well in advance. This is economic preservation.
A whole ecosystem approach
We already have the infrastructure:
CU’s world-class entrepreneurship and business programs
An active Chamber of Commerce
The Downtown Boulder Partnership
A strong network of professional service providers
A deeply mission-driven nonprofit and climate community
Now we need them all aligned around regenerative, shared-ownership, doughnut-informed goals.
A new scorecard for success
At the Chamber’s annual economic forecast event, we should be talking about shared ownership, regenerative practices, supply chain justice, and ecological health.
Imagine an economic outlook presentation that includes:
Number of employee-owned businesses
Wealth retained locally
Emissions avoided
Community wellbeing metrics
Supply chain transformation progress
This is how Boulder becomes a model for future economies.
Accessible on-ramps for everyone
Interest is not the issue. In May, I moderated a panel on shared ownership at Boulder Startup Week; nearly 50 people attended, but they left with nowhere to go.
We need:
A centralized resource hub
Local financing mechanisms
Peer learning groups
Technical assistance programs
Pathways for youth and students to participate
People are hungry for this. We just have to build the entry points.
Reimagining local production and resilience
Resilience is more than an economic term; it’s a survival strategy. If everything falls apart, the local communities are all that’s left.
We need to design as if that’s true.
This means investing in:
Local food systems—like our own local farmers or models like Vertical Harvest in Jackson, WY, which grows organic produce year-round in repurposed warehouse space.
Circular supply chains that reduce environmental harm and strengthen local business networks.
Climate-adaptive infrastructure and community-owned energy.
These aren’t niche ideas; they’re the foundation of resilient cities worldwide.
A call to build what comes next
Cities across the globe are in crisis: aging populations, collapsing small businesses, housing shortages, ecological degradation, and widening inequality. Boulder is not exempt. But unlike many communities, Boulder has the capacity and creativity to respond with boldness rather than resignation.
This is our opening.
We can become a city that chooses community over extraction, resilience over fragility, and shared prosperity over concentrated wealth.
We can build an economy where every business closure isn’t another blow to the social fabric, but instead an opportunity for reinvention, one where workers, residents, and the environment all have a stake in the future we’re shaping together.
This shift won’t happen through luck. It won’t come from a winning football season or the next tech breakthrough.
It will come from changing our mental models.
From designing new systems with intention.
From organizing ourselves in ways that honor our interdependence.
From choosing collectively, to build an economy capable of sustaining people and the planet.
Boulder can lead the way. But only if we start now.