Learning from practice: environmental and community mapping as participatory action research in planning

In this Interface we examine the challenging and innovative work of community and environmental mapping in the Simeto Valley of Sicily. In the Fall of 2015 Daniela De Leo and John Forester interviewed diverse Italian planners to learn about the obstacles, opportunities and surprising turns of their prac- tices. De Leo and Forester hoped, along the way, to explore the work of Laura Saija and her colleague Giusy Pappalardo. While the practice stories of both Saija and Pappalardo will appear in a forthcoming book (De Leo & Forester, 2017), we have selected Pappalardo’s account to examine here with the help of five distinguished commentators from Italy, Brazil, Kenya, and the USA.