Facing transition by collective action in rural landscape

European rural landscapes are in transition. A differentiation is taking place between purely agricultural spaces in a strict sense, multifunctional rural areas in a wider sense, and marginal regions where processes of land abandonment characterise landscape and rural development. In all cases, rural communities reflect these changes: newcomers often increase diversity, and the changing role of farmers and other managers concerning landscape stewardship is fundamentally transforming the boundary conditions for rural place making.
Active societal engagement in the transitions of the rural is therefore required to safeguard a rural development that reflects a coherent and consciously developed vision. As the discourse on futures is dominated by differing perspectives, projected pathways to the future generally result in unrealistic perspectives. On the one hand a majority of the urban population relies on the rural as a source of food, natural vital resources, leisure amenities and identity bonds – agriculture on the other hand is forced to be competitive on an expanding and deregulated market. These very different challenges will have to be resolved in the local landscape.
In this presentation, we address and discuss the challenge of creating engagement and a renewed stewardship for the rural in Europe. The interactional community of place is used as a conceptual anchoring. It is grounded on the principles of a community of place as suggested by Wilkinson (1991): a locality (geographic setting of the community defined by interactions and constructed meanings), a local society (people and organisations in the population, be it homogeneous or heterogeneous), and the community (social fields or processes of social interaction surrounding the organisation of a community). We explore the conditions for engagement and stewardship through discussions of envisioning landscape futures, dealing with rights, constraints and resources, and developing adaptive solutions to each different place. In this context, diverse landscape values can bring people together in joint efforts to use the inherited landscape as a resource to be shared, cherished and veloped as a place rather than being affected only by regulations of individual owners and users. This would allow the missing voice of the rural to be acknowledged and respected by all parties involved, legitimately and equitably, in a future oriented perspective. We will discuss new place based planning paradigms, and the models for implementation in practice, giving examples of processes recently taking place at the local landscape level.