In this fourth week of Geodesign: Change your world, you'll gain an understanding about the inner relationships of the physical and human aspects that contribute to how mu, how the Geodesign strategies are formed. Which is going to set us up well for next week's discussion about the Geodesign process, recall from the Geodesign definitions in Weeks one and two, they're working for proposal for change for a specific geographic context. And here I need to add a concept that we haven't discussed yet, which is sustainability, although neither of the definitions use that word, I think it's inherent in McElvaney's holistic designs and smart decisions. Now here my meaning of sustainability is in regards to how the solution fits a place, or has fitness to a place, which will enable it to continue for a long time. Fitness is used in the scientific ecology, to describe if something is appropriate, or can retain its capabilities and therefore be sustained. There are also voices from the social sciences, that say a place will only be sustained and cared for by people if they like it, want it, or need it so fitness needs to be achieved for both the natural and the cultural place. Geodesign then is striving for decision solutions that fit a place, or in other words seeking design solutions that will enable to be sustained and one hopes even to thrive, this means that we must re-double our efforts to understand that place. Let's reflect back on the notion of location, location, location, and this week, we'll build on that and focus on the influence of the context. To do this, we'll review three topics this week. Yes, you're right I'm always grouping things there in threes, so here they are, the influence of context for factors, scale, and people. Factors comprise all the various elements that can influence or impact a project, we also discuss this during week two and this was framed as the different types of data. Except that now enlisting these factors we are working towards understanding their importance to the project. How their absence, presence, quantity, and so forth, can impact upon the project goals. This is a tricky concept, so I think it's best to illustrate with a couple of examples. The first example is the influence of trees on city streets, looking at a new development or redevelopment of a city, the presence of trees, along streets sometimes is a factor to be considered. Dr. Kathleen Wolf's extensive research shows that trees do play a significant role. She's got many different studies I am only going to only highlight two here, one is about economic impacts, and one about road safety. The first is that shoppers in central business districts of U.S cities of various sizes, spend about 10% more in places with good tree canopy, and they also spend more time during their visits which I think contributes why they drop more money so our second example is regarding safety. A recent study found that crash rates were reduced 46%, when landscape improvements were added to urban streets. So you can see that the presence or absence of street trees will have impacts, which then can be considered as a factor during the design process. Another example of factors is a very different setting, Yellowstone National Park, this one shows how a top predator is a key factor in ecosystem health. When wolves were reintroduced to the park 20 years ago, no one knew what might happen, It turns out that the wolf is a huge influence of controlling elk herds which enabled Riverine trees to return, which lead to more beavers, and so on. This is also a good example of the complexity of place, which we discussed last week, understanding factors, then, are a key part of the mixing when developing your Geodesign scenarios, which is part of the modeling process we discussed last week. These factors also contribute to formulating the criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of design alternatives. Okay, let's now move to our second topic for this week scale. When thinking about the context of a place, it will largely be defined by its scale, In other words, what level of detail should be used to study the place? The scale can range from very large, a whole country, to very small, your own backyard. We use typical descriptors to name a scale of a place or range of global to local classifications, such as countries, states, regions, streets, properties, and so forth. Thinking about our case study so far, we have projects rangng from an entire country, Spain, to a large region, the lower Mississippi River Delta, to a community scale in Africa, and a small city scale in Napa, California. Each of these case studies, the detail, characters, methods, and possibilities of the problem, vary based on the scale that was chosen to investigate that place. The level of detail specified is largely what determines how a place can be described. It's also a consideration in how much local knowledge can be used for example, smaller scale problems such as something the size of a city block could be described in great detail and excellent accuracy. Which larger scale places, they may being have to be described a little bit more abstractly. A key step of the Geodesign process is to determine what level of scale is appropriate for gathering the necessary data, and to be able to successfully implement that design strategy once it's selected. Recall that geodesign is an iterative process, so, changing scales during the process is not uncommon because sometimes, more or less information becomes available. Or the study might change in response to input from decision makers, Invoking the important role of decision-makers brings us to our third topic for this week: people. The influence of people is paramount when discussing the context, It is widely recognized that different sectors of citizens and professionals will be involved in the process. To help us under, better understand those, let's place 'em into four key groups, the people of the place, design professionals, scientists, and information technologists. Taken together, this ids the Geodesign team, the actually composition of the team which is the types of professionals, scientists, and information technology experts will very based on the particular challenge. Since our theme this week is on the influence of context, that's there first group the people the place, and the people the place though is not a single entity. And my colleague, Dr. Lisa and I, have classified this into three interrelated groups. The CLIENT, the GUIDING COALITION, and the COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDERS. The cLIENT is comprised of those who have summoned or hired the Geodesign team. The GUIDING COALITION, is comprised of the community leaders that, ideally, represent all the various factions, and interests in a community, often some or all of those in the client group are also part of the GUIDING COALITION. The COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDERS, are area residents and those from the groups represented in the GUIDING COALITION. The COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDERS can also those who, they may not live in the area, but they might have an interest in the issues, such as people from regional government agencies, non-profits, developers, and the like. This graphic combines the people of the place with the factors. It's a community culture wheel that was developed by my colleagues here at Penn State to illustrate the inner relationship of people to the various types of issues and factors faced during a geodesign process. Though a generalization for a majority of geodesigned projects, people have interests in or concerns about the topics arrayed around the perimeter, such as shown in purple, the aesthetics and the history of the place. These topics then cut into the circle and intersect, with each of the people the place groups. An important takeaway here is that, what the geodesign process seeks is to uncover community values about those topics and issues, are there some values held in common that can become top priorities? Are there opposing viewpoints that will require further study to see if they can be resolved, or perhaps, maybe determine how competing values, can all be satisfied? Looking at last weeks case studies, we see a very good example of a well structured people of the place approach, in addressing the influence of the context. The Leadership Team for the Lower Mississippi project Changing Course is their guiding coalition, It includes representatives from cities, government agencies, local industries, scientists, religious organizations, non-profits, and universities a very comprehensive and diverse list. This project also includes a technical team, as well as a stakeholder team, In conclusion, these context factors and the values of the people, from the components in waiting for the modeling we reviewed last week in our computation discussion. By understanding the cultural and geographic context of a place, especially the particulars that have proven to be suitable are ones that are needed to make it more sustainable, we can better inform appropriate design decisions for a place. Geodesign seeks the relevant scale, from which to pursue contextual understanding, to aid in making informed decisions about what changes will be suitable, and thus result in enduring solutions. Geodesign provides a structure process, for developing sustainable decisions, and encouraging fitness to a place, and we're going to review that structure process next week.
