Communities of hope: design-led innovation for landscape decision-making

Questions around future land-use and landscape decision-making pose challenges for communities with an increasing recognition that localised, contextual perspectives and creative modes of engagement have an important role to play. Focusing on landscape decision-making in the context of the Scottish Highlands & Islands, specifically the Northern and Western Isles, this article explores the potential of a design-led innovation approach. The methodological contribution connects design-led innovation and social design as modes of creative engagement that enable communities to play a key role in democratic deliberation. The Stravaig Symposium supported communities to engage in rich forms of dialogue and conversations for action across geographic, regional and local scales. Through the co-development of a conceptual Landscape Decision-Making Framework to navigate landscape decision-making the article advocates for the emergence of communities of hope, that is, communities capable of realising desirable environmental-cultural futures in relation to the complex systems that determine these futures.