Local communities increasingly find themselves on the frontlines of change. As part of a global movement of grassroots initiatives, they are actively making our cities and neighbourhoods more sustainable. They demonstrate what can happen when citizens become co-designers of their own living environments.
With this field guide, we aim to delve deeper into the power of local communities and the radical shift in roles necessary to bring them to life.
This guide doesn’t offer a step-by-step itinerary or fixed guidelines that tell us where to go next. Instead, think of it as a travel companion, taking us to real-life places and local experiences. In the final part of this journey, it charts what they tell us about future pathways for locally-driven sustainable change. It brings together collective know-how about designing places with and in communities. At its heart are the practices of co-design and connecting—a shared challenge. Hence this field guide is also an invitation to join forces in finding new roads forward.
So become part of our Desire journey and community. Experience what Desire was - and is - through this publication which sees our transformation from a place-based perspective, from the eyes of the people who have learnt to become co-designers in developing the places they call home.