From Pits and Piles to Lakes and Landscapes

Abstract

The Laurentian Vision Partnership is a collaborative planning and design initiative that explores local and regional redevelopment opportunities for depleted iron ore mine lands on Minnesota’s Mesabi iron range. The initiative involves an ad hoc coalition of local, regional, and state representatives from industry, business, communities, education, and government dedicated to advancing the long-term vitality of the region. The initiative is also a land-based case study in the development of transdisciplinary action research. The initiative has employed participatory design tools to promote and maintain collaboration, discourse, and knowledge building across diverse knowledge bases, within a land design framework that considers how changes in active mining processes can regenerate the region’s future ecological and economic environment. This paper outlines the initiative and its projects and methods. It reflects on the partnership’s results and challenges through a review of project documentation, capacity building case studies, and the authors’ professional practice in regional landscape planning, site design, and participatory decision making, as managing members of the partnership since 1999.