Participatory landscape planning and sustainable community development: Methodological observations from a case study in rural Mexico

Most local authorities in rural Mexico lack relevant resource data at appropriate scales to develop community plans, even though planning and development decisions are made largely at this level of government. Many resource planning studies have been conducted in less developed areas of Mexico, but these are of limited applicability to economies in rapid transition facing tremendous internal developmental pressure, such as in the state of Jalisco. In order to assist such local rural communities in Mexico achieve a sustainable balance, a landscape planning process which includes community engagement, supplemented with landscape analyses, classification, mapping as well as various qualitative research methods, is described and analyzed. A site analysis across the case municipality of Tapalpa identified major landscape units, and environmental and socio-economic issues, which were grouped into major themes. Following interviews with community members, a participatory workshop charrette was conducted, where local and institutional stakeholders discussed issues uncovered during the interviews and landscape analysis. A final set of sustainable development recommendations and visualizations demonstrating potential outcomes was assembled for legislation and implementation. This study showed that community engagement through the use of participatory landscape planning is an effective means of informing and impacting local policy related to sustainable community development in rural Mexico. Furthermore, it demonstrates the lack of planning in landscapes outside of major population centers, and the limited utility of existing policies which lack appropriate scale and applicability to rural areas.