I am seeking ways to help Community Spaces, a UK lottery funded open grants scheme to  assist local groups create or improve open spaces to improve the quality of life in their neighbourhood. Community groups have been invited to apply for funding and support and Community Spaces will provide a network of trained facilitators to help them turn ideas into reality, advising them on issues like biodiversity and other specialist knowledge.

To evaluate applications from these community groups, I would appreciate advice from a permaculture perspective as to what measures local community projects might take to improve open space (e.g play areas, community gardens, parks, wildlife areas, ponds, courts and village greens) as well as to reclaim derelict land.  The Living Mandala web site suggests there is bountiful expertise among the permaculture activists in California whose ideas would be appreciated here in the UK.

Iechyd Da

Pedr

Hi Pedr

You might find this helpful. Its a general set of rules for local community projects, form Wendell Berry's article, A New Politics for Community. 

If the members of a local community want their community to cohere, to flourish, and to last, these are some things they would do:

1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth?

2. Always include local nature- the land, the water, the air, the native creatures- within the membership of the community

3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbours.

4. Always supply local needs first. (And only then think of exporting their products, first to nearby cities, and then to others).

5. Understand the unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of "labour saving" if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.

6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of the national or global economy.

7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.

8. Strive to produce as much of the communities own energy as possible.

9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.

10. Make sure that the money paid into the local economy circulates within the community for as long as possible before it is paid out.

11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, teaching its children.

12. See that the old and the young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised "child care" and "homes for the aged". The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.

13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or 'externalised'. Whenever possible, these costs must be debited against monetary income.

14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.

15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighbourly acts. In our time the costs of living are generally increased by the loss of neighbourhood, leaving people to face their calamities alone.

16. A rural community should always be acquainted with, and complexly connected with, community- minded people in nearby towns and cities.

Thanks

Tiku

One of my favourite websites is

                      http://www.placecheck.info/

"Placecheck is a method of assessing the qualities of a place, showing what improvements are needed, and focusing people on working together to achieve them. If necessary, a Placecheck can start small: with half a dozen people round a kitchen table, or a small group meeting on a street corner. A Placecheck can cover a street (or part of one), a neighbourhood, a town centre, or a whole district or city. The setting might be urban, suburban or a village. The initiative can come from anyone, in any organisation or sector.

Placecheck is probably the most simple method for involving a community available. It requires the minimum of resources and preparation. It is ideal for paving the way for other means of community engagement.
Developed by the Urban Design Alliance in the 1990s, Placecheck is now in widespread use in communities throughout the United Kingdom.
Placecheck has been funded by a partnership of organisations including Government, and English Partnerships, together with voluntary effort by professionals in the organisations of the Urban Design Alliance."

It's not exactly what you requested, but you can adapt the principles, also you could search on " community mapping"