Overview

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Ignite your career with Geodesign! The magnitude of challenges before us exceeds the reach of conventional approaches to planning and design. The pandemic has spawned urgent needs for new design approaches and solutions. Also at the doorstep is climate change: altering community design approaches; addressing infrastructure types and locations; as well as the need to protect carbon-sequestering environs. Geodesign provides a revolutionary way forward. It leverages information systems to foster collaborations that result in geographically specific, adaptive, and resilient strategies to wicked problems across scales of the natural and built environment. Geodesign builds confidence through dynamic real-time feedback, which empowers engaged collaborations for meaningful plans. With Geodesign, you can change your world – for the better! This course includes well-illustrated lectures by the instructor, as well as guest lectures each week to ensure you are hearing a variety of viewpoints. Each week you will also be able to examine what Geodesign is through interactive mapping that showcases real-word Case Study examples of Geodesign from around the globe. As you move along in the course, you will discover the interrelationships of both the physical and human aspects that contribute to how Geodesign strategies are composed. The course concludes with you outlining your own Geodesign Challenge, and receiving feedback about that from your peers

Syllabus

Week 1: Shared Languages

This week we’ll begin your geodesign journey by helping you understand that the roots of geodesign are comprised of languages we all share. By languages I mean commonalities everyone can relate to; for example: our awareness of the spaces around us, our connection to place (location), and the way we deal with problem solving nearly everyday.

Week 2: The Three D's of Geodesign

In this second week we begin piecing together some of the key components that are central to the geodesign process. These happen to all start with "D": Design, Decision, and Data. By the end of this lesson I hope you will recognize how these three key components are interrelated.

Week 3: The Three C's of Geodesign

In this third week you will begin to recognize the complexities inherent in the geodesign process.We will also get into two topics that without which, geodesign is likely to fail: computation and collaboration. As it happens these all begin with “C,” hence this week is the Three C's of Geodesign. By the end of this lesson I hope you will recognize how these three key topics are put into action to accomplish geodesign.

Week 4: The Influence of Context

In this fourth week you will gain an understanding about the interrelationships of the physical and human aspects that contribute to how geodesign strategies are composed. Those physical and human aspects comprise the context for a geodesign challenge, so this lesson is titled "The Influence of Context." By the end of this lesson I hope you will recognize that through understanding the cultural and physical context of a place your geodesign team will be better equipped to propose sustainable solutions.

Week 5: Process and Framework

We have been building up to this week, and now we are here-- putting all the pieces together in the geodesign process! In this last week (so sad to say that!) you will gain awareness about the three-stage geodesign process. The lecture includes a overview about the process through a discussion centered on one of the Case Study examples. We also have two guest lectures that share the geodesign process as applied to their work. By the end of this week I hope you will be able to distinguish between the various components of the geodesign process and how each one's role contributes to and is valuable to the whole process.