Asking Questions. Seeking Answers.
Rather than trying to unmake history, Scotland should build on it. Rich landowners, whether native-born or from elsewhere, who cherish Scotland’s wild places, can use their resources to help to care for for it and to protect it from the challenges of the future.
Top down policy won’t transform those wasted spaces. Meaningful regeneration grows upwards from community grassroots but it needs help from above. Fay Young introduces two articles by Susan Mansfield describing how empowered communities can transform local environments and quality of life.
‘Not everybody wants to participate in workshops, meetings, agendas.’ In her second article on the Stalled Spaces project, Susan Mansfield meets Scottish communities where regeneration begins in vacant plots and grows from the grassroots up.
What happens when local communities take control of wasteland? In the first of two articles Susan Mansfield reports on the extraordinary successes of the Stalled Spaces Scotland scheme.
‘The wilderness of Scotland is as artificial as any cityscape.’ ‘The Laird and the pauper live much closer in a city, but the injustice remains. It is simply easier to hide injustice in an area where the remains of life can be portrayed as a romantic feature, rather than a blemish.’ Reflections on the social injustice that destroys communities of Highland and inner city life.