Co-creating multifunctional landscapes – lessons from three case studies

In the face of overlapping social and environmental challenges, multifunctionality has emerged as an important concept in ecosystem and landscape governance. To operationalize multifunctionality, the governance literature calls for collaborative approaches. Despite the abundant literature on collaborative approaches, there is a gap between rhetoric and practice and a need for more real-world examples. This paper explores the role and value of co-design as a co-creation approach to foster multifunctional landscapes. We analyze three different case studies that have deployed co-creation approaches to support multifunctionality by examining how these processes surfaced and shifted contextual conditions, how this influenced innovations and what the implications are for landscape multifunctionality. Rather than departing from landscape ideals, this paper suggests that supporting multifunctional landscapes through co-creation happens 1) from within the context, 2) over a long period of time, and 3) in ‘opposition to’ practices or dynamics that prohibit multifunctionality. We furthermore suggest that the role of co-creation in supporting multifunctionality can be understood as facilitating ongoing sense-making that 1) collaboratively identifies and defines the dynamics that hinder multifunctionality, 2) collaboratively identifies and explores implementation pathways to the ‘next best possibility’ by surfacing and influencing the contextual conditions that enable or hinder its implementation, and 3) reflects and adapts to continuously redefine the undesired and explore emerging possibilities. This paper can thus aid practitioners in implementing co-creation to enable multifunctional landscapes from a bottom-up approach.