Geodesign

Geodesign is a set of techniques and enabling technologies for planning built and natural environments in an integrated process, including project conceptualization, analysis, design specification, stakeholder participation and collaboration, design creation, simulation, and evaluation (among other stages). "Geodesign is a design and planning method which tightly couples the creation of design proposals with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts."

Geodesign as a labeled field owes much to the sponsorship of ESRI and its president, Jack Dangermond. However, geodesign builds greatly on a long history of work in geographic information science, computer-aided design, landscape architecture, and other environmental design fields—and it's still somewhat unclear whether geodesign differs greatly in substance from existing efforts. See for instance, the work of Ian McHarg and Carl Steinitz.

Members of the various disciplines and practices relevant to geodesign have held defining discussions at a workshop on Spatial Concepts in GIS and Design in December 2008 and the GeoDesign Summit in January 2010. GeoDesign Summit 2010 Conference Videos from Day 1 and Day 2 are an important resource to learn about the many different aspects of GeoDesign.

The 2013 Geodesign Summit drew a record 260 attendees from the United States and abroad (watch video coverage of the summit). That same year, a master's degree in Geodesign — the first of its kind in the nation — began at Philadelphia University. Claudia Goetz Phillips, director of Landscape Architecture and GeoDesign at Philadelphia University says "it is very exciting to be at the forefront of this exciting and relevant paradigm shift in how we address twenty-first-century global to local design and planning issues."

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Wikipedia