Collaborative Geodesign to advance multifunctional landscapes

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.05.011

Landscape and Urban Planning

Volume 156, December 2016, Pages 71-80

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.05.011 Get rights and content

Highlights

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We apply collaborative Geodesign in multifunctional landscape-planning and design.
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We engage stakeholders to explore resource protection and agricultural production.
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Collaborative Geodesign enhance optimal landscape design and stakeholder consensus.

Abstract

This paper illustrates the application of Geodesign in the context of multifunctional landscape scale planning and design to optimize production of food and biofuel commodities with enhanced water quality and habitat performance. It draws on multiple disciplinary perspectives, highlighting the contributions of Geodesign in advancing stakeholder consensus in balancing natural resource protection and agricultural production priorities. The paper uses the Seven Mile Creek Fuelshed Project as a research context for examining the ways that Geodesign can enhance collaborative planning processes, build knowledge of natural and production systems at the landscape scale, and integrate consideration of feedback from multiple performance criteria into an adaptive and iterative process of landscape planning and design. The paper describes the development and application of the Geodesign system used in the landscape planning process and offers important insights into how the system contributed to the collaborative stakeholder engagement, informed stakeholder decision making, and enhanced the landscape planning outcomes. A mixed-method analytical approach is used to assess stakeholder perceptions and the outcomes of the collaborative Geodesign process.

Introduction

Geodesign is emerging as an important evolution of earlier innovations in planning support systems (PSS) and public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS). These earlier approaches placed significant emphasis on the technology, analytical capabilities, and decision support, while highlighting the prospects for their use in public engagement processes (Geertman and Stillwell, 1993, Klosterman, 1997, Obermeyer, 1998). As we move into the era of Geodesign, we have the potential to more fully integrate technology and decision-making processes, producing better projects and outcomes for the environment and communities. As Dangermond (2010, p. 506) suggests, “The quality of the results improves because the project is designed around, in concert with, and/or to fully leverage certain geographic, environmental, and social features while simultaneously minimizing undesirable impacts to those same features.” This point is fundamental to the conception of Geodesign as an evolution of a general design or planning process. It is the geovisualization and integration of multiple information types coupled with rapid and iterative quantitative modeling that makes Geodesign unique and offers so much promise for public engagement.

Building on this prospect, this paper focuses on the application of Geodesign, drawing deep insights from practical use and offering evidence as to its effects in decision making processes that involve varied landscape conditions, diverse community perspectives, and myriad environmental, economic, and social concerns. The paper specifically examines the application of Geodesign in enhancing decision making to advance multifunctional landscapes, acknowledging that these kinds of landscapes are not accidental, but are rather the outcomes of landowner and government decisions that have the potential to produce public and private goods. Thus, this research explicitly examines Geodesign application within the context of collaborative processes and decision making, where it has the potential to contribute to the social learning, consensus-building, and improved outcomes predicted in the literature (e.g. Daniels and Walker, 1996, Innes, 1992, Mandarano, 2008, Margerum, 2002b).

Section snippets

Framing Geodesign for application

While the Geodesign term is widely used, research on the concept and its application is quite limited (Batty, 2013). As noted earlier, Geodesign can easily be considered an outflow or evolution of earlier decision support and participatory geographic information system (GIS) applications. Looking back even further, it can be characterized as an evolution of McHarg’s (1969) Design with Nature approach characterized concisely as the “stack of layers” predecessor to current GIS (Dangermond, 2010;

Prospects for integrating Geodesign and collaboration for multifunctionality

In order to consider the tradeoffs and synergies within multifunctionality, decision makers must have informed, interconnected, and legitimate insights into the various ecological, social, and economic functions of landscapes. In short, multifunctionality requires a systemic understanding of the coupled human-environmental system in question (Jordan et al., 2011, Jordan et al., 2013). Engaging and enacting systemic understanding in multifunctional landscapes involves both anticipating and

Collaborative Geodesign in practice

This article explores the application and intentional integration of Geodesign and collaboration for multifunctionality. The findings of this study come from the Seven Mile Creek Fuelshed Project located in southern Minnesota. The project is an effort to explore the prospects for the balanced production of biomass, food, water quality, and habitat values in a 23,551-acre (∼9531-ha) watershed on the Minnesota River. The project engaged roughly 40 community members, including representatives of

Methods

To explore the intersection of collaboration and Geodesign and its ability to produce multifunctional outcomes, a mixed quasi-experimental design was utilized. The analysis was designed to account for outcomes at the participant and community scale, as well as to assess the planning and design outcomes of the process. The primary means of data collection was a participant survey administered at the end of each meeting. The surveys consisted of 12–24 questions, with many of the questions

Findings

Following from the mixed method data analysis approach outlined above, the findings include outcomes relative to the Information-Communication-Process framework, and its intersection with perceptions of multifunctionality. Findings from the quantitative survey data are presented, along with the results of content analysis of narrative responses to open-ended questions to provide for deeper interpretation of collaborative Geodesign outcomes.

Discussion

The findings presented above offer important preliminary evidence of the outcomes of collaborative Geodesign. These findings are presented in the context of the Information-Communication-Process framework, which represents the very intentional structure for integrating collaboration and Geodesign in the Seven Mile Creek Fuelshed Project. Organizing the analysis under this framework allows for parsing out the particular contributions of the various collaborative and Geodesign activities

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for support for this research from the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service Conservation Innovation Grant Program. Additional support was provided by the University of Minnesota’s Office of the Vice President for Research, Initiative for Renewable Energy and Environment, and Institute on the Environment. Special thanks are offered to stakeholder participants who actively engaged with us throughout this study. Additional support was provided by the

Carissa Schively Slotterback, Ph.D., AICP, is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

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Carissa Schively Slotterback, Ph.D., AICP, is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Bryan Runck is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota.

David G. Pitt, PhD, FAICP, is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota.

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View full text

Collaborative Geodesign to advance multifunctional landscapes

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Framing Geodesign for application

Prospects for integrating Geodesign and collaboration for multifunctionality

Collaborative Geodesign in practice

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Acknowledgements

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

Ecological Economics

Landscape and Urban Planning

Landscape and Urban Planning

Large area hydrologic modeling and assessment part I: model development

Journal of the American Water Resources Association

A collaborative GIS method for integrating local and technical knowledge in establishing biodiversity conservation priorities

Biodiversity and Conservation

Defining geodesign (=GIS + Design?)

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design

Evaluation of a collaborative model: a case study analysis of watershed planning in the intermountain west

Environmental Management

Multifunctional agriculture in the United States

Bioscience

The role of knowledge when studying innovation and the associated wicked sustainability problems in agriculture

Advances in Agronomy

Designing public participation processes

Public Administration Review

Quasi-experimentation: design and analysis issues in field settings

Ecosystem services in decision making: time to deliver

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

GeoDesign and GIS—designing our future

Proceedings of digital landscape architecture

Group learning in participatory planning processes: an exploratory quasiexperimental analysis of local mitigation planning in Florida

Journal of Planning Education and Research

Geodesign: past, present, and future

Designing to avoid disaster: the nature of fracture-critical design

Fundamentals of geodesign

Proceedings of digital landscape architecture, Anhalt University of Applied Science

Sustainable intensification in agriculture: premises and policies

Science

Interative support systems for participatory planning

Towards geodesign: repurposing cartography and GIS?

Cartographic Perspectives

Developing geographic information infrastructures for local government: the role of trust

The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien

The communicative turn in planning theory and its implications for spatial strategy formations

Environment and Planning B

Group processes and the social construction of growth management: Florida, Vermont, and New Jersey

Journal of the American Planning Association

Consensus building as role playing and bricolage: toward a theory of collaborative planning

Journal of the American Planning Association