Community-led coastal planning: The contribution of visualizations to decision-making

A number of communities along the eastern coast of the UK are experiencing change to their physical and social landscapes. This creates the need for opportunities to consider and address issues specific to the communities. This paper reports on research with a community in a village in North Norfolk (UK) and examines the use of visualizations as aids in bottom-up decision making. Visualisa-tions created through geodesign represent suggestions from study participants about what the village could contain and look like with a view to making it a viable place for people to live in the future. These visualisations, as part of an iterative ongoing process of community involvement, served as a basis for visioning futures of the village by facilitating understanding of changes and possibilities within the village. They are also used as a tool to illustrate possible challenges and opportunities for the village to adapt to coastal change.