In the ongoing debate about what drives economic growth and civic vitality, the conversation tends to focus on familiar variables: infrastructure investment, business development, skills training, technological innovation and inward migration of talent. These factors matter. But a major longitudinal research study commissioned by the Knight Foundation suggests that they are all downstream of something more fundamental and more relational: the emotional attachment that residents and workers feel to the places they inhabit.

The Soul of Community study, conducted by Gallup across 26 communities over three years, investigated what factors most reliably predicted both civic engagement and economic performance. The findings were striking and, for those accustomed to conventional economic analysis, counterintuitive.

What the research found

The study identified three primary drivers of community attachment: social offerings (the opportunities for socialising and meeting others), openness (how welcoming the community felt to different kinds of people) and aesthetics (the physical beauty and vitality of the local environment). These three factors, not income levels, institutional quality or economic opportunity, were the strongest predictors of whether people felt emotionally attached to their community.

More significantly, the research demonstrated a clear and consistent relationship between community attachment and economic growth. Communities with the highest levels of emotional attachment to place consistently generated the highest rates of GDP growth over the study period. The causal logic was straightforward: people who feel attached to a place are more likely to invest in it, to start businesses there, to attract talent there and to stay there rather than leaving in search of somewhere that feels more alive.

The systemic loop between attachment and prosperity

The research reveals a systemic loop that conventional economic development models routinely fail to account for. When people feel emotionally connected to a community, they behave in ways that make that community more prosperous. They spend locally, they volunteer, they support local businesses and they recruit others to join them. This behaviour generates the economic activity and civic vitality that makes the community more attractive to others, which deepens attachment further and continues the cycle.

Conversely, when community attachment is low, people behave in ways that accelerate decline. They spend elsewhere, they disinvest emotionally and financially and they leave when opportunities arise. The community becomes less attractive, attachment falls further and the cycle of disengagement and economic decline becomes self-reinforcing.

What conventional models miss

The reason that conventional economic development models fail to account for this loop is that they treat community attachment as an invisible by-product of economic success rather than as a driver of it. In this framework, if you build the economic infrastructure, the community feeling will follow. The Soul of Community research reverses this assumption. It suggests that if you build the conditions for emotional attachment, the economic performance will follow.

This is a genuinely radical claim, because it implies that the most effective economic development investment a community can make is not in roads, broadband or business parks. It is in the social offerings, the openness and the aesthetic vitality that make people feel that this place is worth caring about. It is in the informal gatherings, the welcoming of strangers, the cultivation of beautiful public spaces and the building of the relational density that turns a location into a home.

Citizenship as economic investment

For the active citizen, the Soul of Community research reframes the everyday acts of community building as a form of economic investment. When you organise a street gathering, welcome a new neighbour, tend a shared garden or simply make time to connect with the people around you, you are not engaging in a soft social activity peripheral to the real work of economic development. You are participating in the construction of the community attachment that the research identifies as the most reliable driver of long-term prosperity.

The question this research poses to institutional leaders and policymakers is equally direct: why do mainstream economic models continue to treat community attachment as a by-product when the evidence consistently suggests it is the precondition?

Questions for reflection

How does cultivating an emotional, caring bond with your teammates or place directly impact your group’s productivity, retention and economic viability?

Why do mainstream economic models continue to treat community attachment as an invisible by-product rather than a core driver of wealth and organisational performance?

Think of a community or organisation you know that has experienced genuine economic or civic renewal. Was it preceded by a deepening of social connection, openness and aesthetic vitality?

What is one investment your team or community could make this week in the social offerings, openness or aesthetic vitality that the research identifies as the foundations of attachment?

Inspired by: Russell, C. and McKnight, J. (2022) The connected community: discovering the health, wealth, and power of neighborhoods. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.