The author speaks

This semester I am asking my students to read The Living Landscape by Fritz Steiner. But instead of thinking about him abstractly as an author, I recommend this talk he gave at the Geodesign Summit. Well worth taking a break and watching for a few minutes.

Notes from DLA 2018 1

At the Digital Landscape Architecture meeting at Wienhenstephan-Triesdorf, Penn State's Kelleann Foster gave a great keynote lecture. As a good keynote does, it covered lots of ground, which I will not try to summarize. But along the way she referenced some other interesting resources:

Carlo Ratti's idea that designers (especially geodesigners) are 'mutagens'.

APA's Metrics for Healthy Planning Communities

Map.social

iNaturalist
Moves-App
HBR Issue on Design Thinking
Diana Budds' 7 urban design trends

Geodesign in the news

Forbes has posted a feature on Geodesign today. It is an interesting indicator of how broadly the topic appeals to the general public and the private sector. The examples, while short, demonstrate variety in Geodesign as they range from utility networks, to Chinese sponge cities, to German Autobahn.

New paper on computer-mediated design

I have a new paper/polemic published online in the forthcoming Special Issue of Landscape and Urban Planning on Geodesign. The whole issue looks pretty amazing thanks to years of behind the scenes work by the guest editors, Allan Shearer and Fritz Steiner.

But, of course, you will want to start with my paper called "Relinquishing a bit of control: Questions about the computer's role in geodesign".

FitCity 2016

Exciting to see more designers getting onto the bandwagon of making our communities healthy places. This week there is a great meeting at BAM in Brooklyn called FitCity 2016 that is exploring how design can improve health. Since it is sponsored by the AIA, it will probably be a little heavy on architecture, but the ideas should be edgy. And, if you can't attend in person, you can follow along at #FitCity2016

New map design book

Map design fans will be excited. Cynthia Brewer has a new book out promoting ideas behind designing better maps. And, because it is 2016, Esri Press has a 2 minute video describing the book.

Transit planning that works like a videogame?

Governing magazine reports on a new software app called Remix that empowers transit planners. They quote Joshua Poe, a planner in Louisville, as saying, "Transit planners have been lacking a long time in anyone building software with us in mind in terms of our daily needs." The tool really looks like the sort of spatially-enabled information-laden app that is usually talked about at the Geodesign Summit.

Ways of designing

How many different ways of designing are there? Carl Steinitz gives us a good start with the ones he details in this 35 minute geodesign video.

Tactile spatial experiences with augmented reality

It starts as a learning opportunity for kids




It can include simulation of water flowing




Adding some fire modelling makes it an easy to deploy emergency management tool

Laser letters in the sky

The Dirt posted a video from a Japanese company showing a portable unit that uses lasers to create plasma images in the air above the unit. The current intent is that this unit could be mounted on a vehicle which could be deployed during emergencies to "draw" messages in the air in places where a sign could not. Non-emergency uses in parks could be interesting too.


But, for geodesigners,the implications are slightly different. Watch the video (below) and ask yourself how it would look if a future generation of the unit were mounted sideways and cast images over an adjacent landscape. Could the designer of a new park use this visualize different shapes for potential landforms? Could it help the public visualize alternative scenarios?

A geodesign dissertation

How many geodesign dissertations have been completed? I don't have an answer. But I can account for at least one.

Former Arizona State University student, Melinda Shimizu, has completed a dissertation titled, The Development and Assessment of A Spatial Decision Support System for Watershed Management in the Niantic River Watershed: A Geodesign Approach. It is exciting to see the ideas of geodesign getting tested. When I hear concerns raised, it is good to know that some are trying to reduce the uncertainty in the field by creating this foundation of literature.

Essays on Geography and GIS

Esri has released its latest online issue of Essays on Geography and GIS. For fans of geodesign it includes articles by Shannon McElvaney and for VGI fans it has a Matt Artz essay on citizen science.

Location Powers

OGC is hosting a meeting next month that sounds fascinating. Location Powers will be a smart cities meeting in Tokyo, Japan that focusing "on understanding the location and place needs of a Smart City." It seems very geodesign-ish, but is more focused on the specific applications within the urban setting.

Short geodesign video

A highlight video from the 2014 Geodesign Summit in which I make a brief appearance.

Open Houses and such

If you are interested in Geodesign you might want to check out the Philadelphia U. open house on November 1 where you can check out their program. Details here.

If you are interested in a Masters in Landscape Architecture you should try Rutgers' Open House on Saturday November 8th. 

Geodesign videos

One of the benefits of having Esri sponsor the Geodesign Summits is that there is a world-class video recording system built into the meeting room. The results is that I can easily share a few of my favorite talks.

There is a large library of videos on geodesign at Esri but also a decent number on YouTube.
Watch Arizona's Ryan Perkl show how geodesign can transform ecological design of wildlife corridors:

Or, watch the director of SOM's Black Box demonstrate the potential for parametric design of entire sections of a city.
If you dig around you can find quite a few of Carl Steinitz's geodesign presentations

And although they are a little long, the Bran Ferren videos are always a hit:

Talking about megacities

As an aside I will be mentioning some instant city and megacity issues to the students in our intro studio. You (and they) may find it interesting to read about some of the vacant instant cities that have been built but left unfilled. A few years ago National Geographic took a look at the instant cities phenomenon.

I have never visited one of the modern instant cities but I certainly have been to a megacity: Seoul. See below.

Ways of designing

Steinitz lecture on video: Ways of Designing

Has pre-fab architecture turned a corner?

Lately I have seen more stories on pre-fab architecture as a means for making new and innovative architecture more accessible. But the stories tend to show very stylish homes, sometimes leaning towards vacation homes, like this story on more factory options in Ozy online magazine.

But a subset are closer to the Design Like You Give a Damn school of social innovation, using the increasingly cheaper techniques for lower income alternatives. The new issue of Metropolis looks at how the Chinese are trying to apply the pre-fab innovations from their megacities to building new African urban communities that are safe, solid and more carefully planned than current urban housing. But, it potentially costs African jobs.

As an invention becomes innovation, there is often a moment when it changes social responses and practices. If pre-fab urbanism changes the informal settlement patterns of the urban poor, this trend will have seriously turned a corner.

Esri UC 2014

Last week, a massive horde of GIS experts, technicians, fans and "users" descended on San Diego for a week of GIS feeding frenzy at the Esri User Conference. If you missed the world's largest GIS event, here are a few highlights:

A summary of the plenary in which Jack said Geodesign is the thing
The US Commerce Secretary addressed the audience
Scientific data meetings at the US
Esri's new ArGIS OpenData
Minneapolis' ArcGIS site