Communities - getting involved

Get to know your local landscape and what is important about it

Prepare a parish or village map (see Parish Maps)   or develop guided walks to help others to understand what it is you value about the local landscape.  These can be used to encourage people in the community to care for your area, for example through volunteering to help manage a local woodland, or persuading people not to drop litter.  Having a clear understanding of what you value about your area, and how you want it to change, helps to generate ideas for projects and landscape objectives for your local development plan.

Get involved in development planning

Often communities become concerned about landscape change in response to new development proposals.  It helps to get involved during the preparation of the your local authority development plan, so that you can help to set landscape objectives and policies for your area.  You can get involved in council-run community participation initiatives.  For more on how you can become involved see the Community Engagement and Empowerment  part of the Scottish Government's website.

Working with developers and planners

Community engagement techniques help developers and local authorities tap into local knowledge, explore local issues, raise awareness and build understanding about development proposals and plans.  This can include asking local people to consider what they value about their local landscapes, and how they would like to see them change.  Community involvement can identify projects for landscape enhancement, routes to greenspaces, and opportunities for enjoying nature in parks and the surrounding countryside.

Often part of a design process called masterplanning, developers or planning authorities hold public meetings or workshops to help communities have an early say in proposals that may affect their area.  A number of techniques have been developed, for example Enquiry by design  , and the charrette process used at, amongst others, Tornagrain  new town.

Before going to a consultation or engagement exercise it is worth doing a little preparation.  Knowing what you value about the landscape will help you to explain why your place is important.  Think about what makes your landscape special to your community and what concerns you have.  For example the landscape could be special because of the tranquillity of the scene, the character of the hills, the trees and woodlands, the colours of the houses, or the walks. If you live in a town or village, you could prepare a Design Statement. 

Prepare a Village or Town Design Statement

These are practical tools to help communities influence decisions on design and development in their town or village.  A good design statement will describe the character of your village or town, against which planning applications may be assessed to make sure that they respect the local identity.  Glencaple  in Dumfries and Galloway is one community which has been involved in producing a Village Design Statement to help guide how their village evolves.  For more information on these and similar techniques see  Landscape Character Assessment - How stakeholders can help   and Village Design: Making local character count in new development  .

Carry out a landscape project

You may want to take action to improve or protect your local landscape, or celebrate it through activities such as art projects.  You may want to encourage volunteers to help manage a local woodland or plant trees.  For ideas and information on grants see our landscape resource library.

Share your views on landscape

Contribute to debates about landscape and show which landscapes have particular meaning to you.  PlaceBook Scotland is a web-based project which allows individuals and groups to post photographs, short films, music, poetry and prose sharing places which are special to them, whether iconic or closer to home.