Renewal & Repopulation

It may seem odd that a conversation about this is necessary at all, but for many rural dwellers with a concern for the sustainable development of their place, of which many community land owners would be typical, there are concerns that national influences and policies can impinge upon what they see as their legitimate aspirations to see their place develop and their environment renew.

Over many decades, but in the context of history very recently, we have seen cultural constructs develop of how our landscape ought to be regarded. To rural dwellers these constructs can appear as an elite view of how our landscape ought to look for those who visit the countryside. Those constructs are legitimate in their own terms, and they tend to value the lack of human presence, emptiness, remoteness, notions of solitude, and what is, mostly wrongly, portrayed and perceived as naturalness. To others the very same places can appear forlorn and desolate when those areas once were home to vibrant communities, rich in culture and far more bio-diverse than they are today. Yet characterisations of the landscape that recognise this, that capture the history of these places and represent the same landscapes some see as `wild’ as actually stripped of their people and denuded of their naturalness by the interventions of humans are much more difficult to find. Many would believe that such characterisations would be far more honest more accurate historically than to represent their emptiness and lack of bio-diversity as somehow a natural order.

Formal policy toward landscape characterisations are powerful and can have real effects on how places may develop in the future. From the community land owner perspective, with owners motivated by the needs of people and communities and with ambitions for a sustainable future for their places, attracting new populations and potentially re-peopling currently empty places, while also renewing the richness and bio-diversity of their places; they want to see future land and landscape policy which gives far greater recognition to the legitimate place of people in the landscape, greater landscape justice.

A number of community owners own and manage some of Scotland’s most treasured landscapes, they love those landscapes and want to protect their grandeur and the ability of visitors to enjoy those landscapes, but they also want far more recognition of the needs of people and the environment in that landscape.

This webpage is dedicated to exploring these issues from the perspective of those who want to see a development of how we regard, protect and develop landscape, with people, communities and renewing the environment firmly in mind. Over the next few months, we will be publishing papers on this subject on this page.

Community Land Scotland will continue to hold editorial rights as to what appears here and will consider publishing contributions but does not guarantee to do so, particularly where there are existing outlets for alternative views. If you are interested in contributing to this page, please email: info@communitylandscotland.org.uk