JGF: Your 1998 book, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, retraces the histories of several countries as they transition from the predominance of private enterprise in essential services such as water, gas, transportation, and housing; the limited regulatory capacity of municipal and national governments; the dominance of laissez-faire ideology; and the reliance on small and fragmented voluntary associations towards an expanded role for the state in social and economic life.

Can you describe the period before the start of the ‘progressive era’?

DTR: You could describe it in three ways. First, it's the age of liberated capital, when capital first breaks loose from the state’s direction. This happens in the UK, in the United States, and across most of the industrialised world. Capital also breaks loose from the mercantile pursuits that were so important in the eighteenth century. It’s the age of industrial capitalism; the factory is the symbol of the new, private, unleashed enterprise. 

It's secondly an age in which a new social utopia comes into being, an idea which we associate with Adam Smith, though he's not the only one who speaks in this way – that the best of all possible worlds is not made by designs from above but by allowing people to pursue their own self-interests. We all know the famous Adam Smith quote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Self-interest is the key to progress. Setting it loose, we get the best of all practically possible worlds. 

But then thirdly, it's also the age of Charles Dickens, its optimism undercut by a counter-sense that the new social and economic order is cruel, built across an ever-growing chasm between the newly rich and the new urban poor; that it's full of exploitation; that it’s a dystopia of a radically new sort. Dickens had no answer to the nightmares he recognised except kindness. In some ways, those whom we call progressives took that fear and urgency and tried to go beyond kindness.

JGF: How does the nature of the urban poor differ in places like Germany, Britain, and the United States?

DTR: They were all part of a strongly connected social-economic family. The United States in this era was a recipient of massive German, English, Irish, and Scottish immigration. British investment flowed abundantly into American enterprises. In these and other ways, the Atlantic economy was fundamentally transnational. But there were important differences between these three nations. A key distinction in this period was the structure of US law. Starting in the early part of the nineteenth century, American jurists began to invent something they call ‘freedom of contract’ – a constitutional principle of expansive scope and power. When states began to regulate the hours of labour by statute on the British model, American courts overturned most of their work on the grounds that individual workers and their employers must be free to enter employment contracts on whatever terms they choose. On similar grounds, regulation of railroad and public utility rates was much slower to take hold in the US than in Britain or Germany. These and many more like it were court-made decisions, issued with a constitutional authority foreign to other legal systems in the Atlantic world. 

The US state didn't completely withdraw from the social realm. Nor did “progressives” seek to employ the state only for aims we would now call progressive. Many of the people who endeavoured to bring the economy under greater public control were the same people who enforced racial segregation in the US, using the state and its police powers to achieve it. Some of them, like Theodore Roosevelt, were imperialists to the core, as were almost all their analogues in Germany. 

Take a walk through Braunstone, an area woven with social housing on the edge of West Leicester, and you’ll soon spot the neighbourhood’s gathering spaces. 

An award-winning health and social care centre is buzzing with activity; an energy-efficient community hub comes alive with library visitors and adult education classes. You’ll find a well-used foodbank and pantry, and an affordable ‘pre-loved’ second hand shop in a former post office. A cluster of small businesses and social enterprises share a large hub with a dance academy, as kids spill in and out of the football pitch.

None of these arrived through a private developer’s masterplan. The patchwork has been assembled over 25 years by b inspired: a charity and community anchor that stewards a dozen buildings in and around Braunstone. 

Over this time, they’ve gradually transformed derelict or underused assets into a neighbourhood-scale community property portfolio: a web of spaces making local life thriving and affordable, incubating community businesses and reinvesting profits locally. They’ve revived 12 properties, unlocking affordable workspace for 50 small businesses, activities for thousands of residents, and quality, affordable housing for four families. Many of these assets were transferred from the city council or negotiated at below-market sale prices, then painstakingly retrofitted through patient fundraising, each building becoming a catalyst for the next.

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In an area long ranked highly on deprivation indices, b inspired’s story began in the early 2000s with the New Deal for Communities programme. But its longevity comes from the people, like CEO Angie Wright, who refused to let that decade of investment evaporate and worked to reverse the decline signalled by boarded-up shops, empty council buildings, and disappearing local services. As Angie says, “When buildings are neglected, it makes it look and feel like there’s no creativity or potential in the neighbourhood. But there absolutely is.”

This is what it looks like when a community begins to own and shape its own land and buildings for the long term. And it’s not an isolated story…

In London, Stour Trust is acquiring and transforming spaces in gentrifying Hackney, Tower Hamlets, and Southwark, where community organisations are being priced out and long-standing cultural venues evicted overnight. Founder Juliet Can and team have secured multiple virtual freehold leases, including a peppercorn lease of 999 years. That model, says Juliet, “secures affordability for communities in perpetuity, ensuring life-affirming infrastructures continue to exist outside of the market economy.”

Across England, this movement for community asset development is growing. Local leaders are taking on not one, but several, buildings – and turning them into long-term tools for economic justice, social infrastructure and ecological resilience. 

So, what does it take to start the journey from one precarious lease, or no space at all, to a portfolio that transforms a neighbourhood?

‍1/ Build your partnership

The groundwork is relational. Trace back the origin stories of various community property portfolios and what do you find? Conversations. Coalitions. People coming together around at-risk community spaces, threatened venues and new developments. Or sharing experiences of racial and spatial injustice, or local responses to climate and housing pressures. You also find local authorities and developers wanting to do regeneration differently. 

In Darnall Ward in Sheffield, home to a large migrant community, a coalition is taking form. A number of properties have sat empty or underused for years: from an old B&Q to a historic pub, as well as civic spaces. The neighbourhood is shaped by long-term underinvestment, industrial pollution and a critical shortage of social infrastructure. 

“[This is] putting the health of the Global Majority at risk for the economic benefit of people who don’t live locally. I believe these communities are best placed to begin reopening the doors of high street shops and landmark buildings, with local people making decisions,” says Kisha Bradley from Sheffield-born social enterprise Brightbox.  

Brightbox is convening a group of local residents and organisations with experience of spatial injustice to “decentralis[e] power and financial flow”. They’ll co-shape an alternative vision, collaborating with Sheffield City Council and select private asset owners. 

With new core funding from the National Lottery Community Fund (as part of Platform Places’ pilot Local Property Partnerships programme), the group is negotiating its first two buildings and ensuring local underrepresented people have a seat at the table. Kisha says that the funding has been “transformational”: “We’re now able to think and act long-term.”

In Liverpool City Region, Kindred LCR commissioned research from University of Liverpool finding that 70% of the city region’s socially-trading organisations (STOs) cite a lack of secure, affordable space as a key barrier to viability or growth. In response, Kindred has been collectivising: convening STOs and making the case to the Combined Authority to shift funds to this sector. Through the Local Property Partnerships programme and in collaboration with St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council, they’ve secured, and are now activating, the “Street and a Half”: a row of spaces being reimagined with social impact and creative organisations, with a view to a 30-year lease. As Erika Rushton from Kindred puts it, “Clustering STOs means greater impact.”

2/ Secure funds

Even the strongest partnerships need money, and rarely does it arrive all at once. Funding tends to be a story of careful layering, with three broad areas:

• Pre-development costs — to resource a small local team to build partnerships, undertake feasibility studies and develop business models.
• Capital costs — for building acquisition, retrofit and refurbishment.
• Revenue costs — for programming and marketing spaces.

(Visit the ‘Resources’ section of the Platform Places website for examples of funders)

Wandsworth Town Property Partnership began with a £10,000 grant from the local council, followed by £30,000 in further seed funding from Legal & General. By convening stakeholders over a joyful dinner and mapping who owns Wandsworth Town, they started co-creating a new vision and strategy for local regeneration. This early groundwork led to a National Lottery Community Fund grant, alongside Kindred and Brightbox. 

b inspired shows what layered funding can achieve. Over time, their growing portfolio has made them largely self-sufficient, with around 60% of income coming from trading, space hire, and housing, enabling them to offer affordable space to small businesses and avoid hand-to-mouth grant cycles. Their trading company’s surplus flows back into the charity, which owns the buildings.

Getting governance right is vital in order to raise funds and hold the lease or freehold. Legal entity options range from CICs to CIOs to Community Benefit Societies, but a single entity can rarely hold all the risks, assets, and funding streams across multiple properties. Hastings Commons has developed a governance ‘stack’ of four different organisations working in consortium: a social enterprise company limited by shares, a charitable CBS, a registered charity and a subsidiary housing body. Expert advice is important to find the right model(s) for your organisation (look for pro bono support or funding to cover this).

3/ Negotiate your first space 

Bedminster Works in South Bristol (another pilot Local Property Partnership) is mapping and matching a network of spaces with community organisations, enabling feasibility studies and securing high street homes for groups like Share Bristol: Library of Things. They’ve researched local ownership, selected strategic properties, and begun convening public and private landlords through different tactics. James Perrott from Bedminster Works notes that the area is experiencing “significant gentrification pressures", so acting quickly is crucial, “before buildings are lost to mainstream development.”

Planning obligations can help. Stour Trust partnered with a housing developer through a Section 106 (a planning condition requiring developers to contribute to community infrastructure) to secure their 999-year peppercorn lease, double the size of their original space. Wandsworth Town Property Partnership recently agreed a ten-year social value lease with a local developer (a template Heads of Terms is available on the Platform Places website).

At b inspired, the key was not just persuading the council to transfer assets but shaping the terms of that transfer: pushing back on clauses that banned subletting and insisting on longer leases to more easily unlock funding. CEO Angie explains that the process gets easier each time: “Now we’ve got that foundation of trust, councils and funders can see you’re serious.”

Rebuilding Popular Democracy in the 21st Century

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In an era marked by democratic breakdown and economic pessimism, this short provocation explores the decline of democratic membership organisations as a rarely recognised cause of this crisis, and sets out a strategy for their revival. 

With civil society now dominated by memberless NGOs, it argues that we must confront how the absence of collective institutions is undermining our ability to build and maintain a functioning democracy – particularly at a moment when the political consequences are increasingly visible.

The co-director of the Centre for Democratic Business – Jonny Gordon-Farleigh – writes about the upcoming launch of Membership Nation, a new research programme and a series of conferences in Britain and the United States, which proposes that a civic revival rooted in mass participation and institutional renewal is the only viable way out of the current ‘crisis of democracy’.

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There seems to be no end to the interest in the “death of democracy” nor a lack of attempts to renew or reformulate it. Yet, while we may no longer live in a period of apathy and disengagement, the politics that followed the financial crisis appear to be markedly different from – and far less effective than – the popular politics of the past.

What explains these changes in the nature of our democratic institutions and participation across Britain over the last 50 years? And despite the inexorable rise of civic entrepreneurship, policy experimentation, and progressive movements, why does our society remain so unequal, divided, and powerless?

From Membership to Management: The ‘Hollowing Out’ of Civil Society

British civil society has always been plural, spanning public charities, family trusts, trade unions, and mutual societies, but it is democratic membership bodies – those controlled by their members – that once formed the backbone of social change. From leagues and federations to unions and associations, these organisations offered active participation and representation, enabling millions of individuals of modest means to join the same institutions as the most privileged citizens. Through these structures, they built social ties, economic solidarity, and political power.

From the 1960s onwards, however, these membership organisations – with their subnational roots and democratic accountability – were steadily replaced by professionalised, staff-driven NGOs and consultancies offering advocacy services to passive beneficiaries. This “advocacy explosion”, as Theda Skocpol describes in Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management, redirected civic energy into “professional advocacy, private foundation grant-making, and institutional trusteeship”. The result was a “diminished democracy” – even, as she provocatively calls it, an “oligarchic” one – where hired experts replaced citizens as the agents of civic life.

These transformations hollowed out the institutional foundations of democratic power and initiated a “great disengagement”. Without membership bodies connecting politics, civil society, and business, our public sphere became dominated by a relatively small number of think tanks securing policy achievements “away from democratic contestation.” Individuals were reimagined as ‘disaggregated’ consumers of policy preferences rather than members of a political community who would fund, participate in, and ultimately lead collective institutions.

The Failure of Technocratic Renewal

Faced with widespread public disaffection, calls for “democratic renewal” have risen over the last couple of decades. Yet, as Henry Farrell and Hahrie Han note in their essay ‘AI and Democratic Publics’ (2025), initiatives such as open government, digital consultation, and citizens’ assemblies tend to be procedural rather than structural – concerned with moments of engagement rather than rebuilding the democratic institutions that make participation meaningful. And most remain technocratic and apolitical in nature, framing social and political questions as neutral “problems” to be solved by "disinterested" experts or “mini-publics,” who can apparently reach “collectively superior outcomes” than the wider electorate.

But these examples of disintermediation – which bypasses representative institutions in favour of direct and individualised participation – have only deepened alienation. They invite individuals to contribute as citizen-experts rather than as members of a collective with its own interests and values. As Christopher Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti argue in Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics, such approaches do not solve the crisis of democratic discontent; they only exacerbate it.

These same logics underpin what political historian Anton Jaeger calls the “movement model” that has dominated contemporary democratic practice: a ‘gaseous’ form of participation that thrives on ease of entry and exit but struggles to generate durable organisation or loyalty. The result, Jaeger warns, is a democracy that appears energetic on the surface yet remains structurally frail beneath it.

Reclaiming Collective Power: Towards a Membership Nation

If the private NGO ‘order’ has edged citizens out of meaningful involvement, how can we close the widening gap between people and power? We argue that democratic renewal requires rebuilding the institutional infrastructure of participation through mass membership organisations capable of shaping interests and values, and encouraging long-term collective action.

To revive democracy, we must recover the membership ethos: the conviction that political agency arises from belonging, not merely voice; from shared institutions, not from the “non-politics” of platforms. By strengthening membership bodies, we can reclaim politics and government from the narrow confines of “policy” and “governance”, re-embedding civic, economic, and political institutions in the fabric of democratic life.

Given the fragility of modern politics, perhaps it is time to rebuild our membership nation: to reinvent the popular democracy of the last century for a different age, and to make the growth of democratic membership associations a priority for the public and policymakers alike.

You could quite easily walk past a cage and not even notice it. For many people in inner-city London, though, the cage – or "their" cage – is a place drenched in meaning and significance.

Sometimes referred to as ball courts, pens, or Multi-Use Games Areas (MUGAs), cages often consist of nothing more than a concrete surface, fencing, and a couple of goals and basketball hoops. They are among the most rudimentary structures to be found in any city, and yet the social life of a cage is a complex thing. For different people, the cage may evoke memories of fun, friendship, and laughter, or of fear, danger, and intimidation. 

I've sought to become an expert on the cages in my home borough, Hackney, in north-east London, where I've been a youth worker for the past ten years. Through a series of projects, I’ve spoken with children and young adults, parents, youth workers, and sports coaches about the role cages play in the social life of the local neighbourhood. 

Thinking about social infrastructure ‘from the cage’ can help illuminate important considerations about why, how, and for whom particular parts of the city become significant sites for sociality. In a recent academic publication co-authored with Fraser Curry and Stephen Crossley, I make two main points about cages which I think have relevance for all forms of social infrastructure.