People are realizing the important role that local business plays in the creation of healthy, sustainable communities. The following articles, publications and web sites provide valuable information and resources for local businesses and communities. (we're still compiling the information for this page, so please let us know about things that should be included!)

Be sure to take a look at our Partners page to learn more about local organizations who support local businesses.

Table of Contents

News Articles

Seeing Red: Eating Locally and Debunking the Red-Blue Divide by Barbara Kingsolver, Mother Jones Magazine, April 30, 2007

Early Girls, Dolly Partons, and the attack of the California tomatoes: When my family tried to eat local for a year, we learned as much about politics as we did about produce.

 

 

 

Forget Organic - Eat Local Time Magazine Cover Article, March 12, 2007 The new "local foods" movement is questioning whether that pesticide-free apple is better than one grown in your own backyard. Well-written peice about benefits of buying local food first.

 

Books & Publications

Going Local - Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael H. Shuman
Going Local shows how some cities and towns are dealign with the challenges of mobile corporations and their draining effect on communities. Refusing to be overcome by Wal-Marts and layoffs, they are taking over abandoned factories, switching to local produce and manufactured goods, and pushing banks to loan money to local citizens. Shuman details how dozens of communities are recapturing their own economies with these new strategies, investing not in outsiders but in locally owned businesses.

The New Village Green - Living Light, Living Local, Living Large by Stephen Morris
The village green is the focal point of any community, a gathering place where the best ideas take root and the brightest voices are heard. The New Village Green gathers some of the best ideas and brightest voices of the green community, some famous and familiar, others fresh and unknown. Each tells an absorbing story, and collectively they comprise a powerful chorus that profiles the current state of the environment.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

 

Online Resources

The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) mission is to catalyze, strengthen, and connect local business networks dedicated to building strong Local Living Economies. The Mile High Business Alliance is a member of this national organization.

WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together.

Peak Moment video featuring Michael H. Shuman discussing Going Local.

 

Know of something that should be included here? Let us know !