Sharing stories of place to foster social learning

Sharing stories about places reveals the emotions of stakeholders and facilitates dialogue that promotes social learning beneficial to land-use planning. There are several entrenched forces in society that prevent planning from treating environments as places. “Learning circles” are one strategy to overcome these forces and lay a foundational dialogue for place-based conservation. The authors applied this approach in three cases and evaluated its effectiveness in: (1) valuing stakeholders’ emotional expression; (2) allowing participants to feel safe in sharing their place stories; and (3) recognizing that sharing place meanings can help create new public values for a landscape.