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This column is sponsored by ESRI

The tagline of V1 Magazine is, “promoting spatial design for a sustainable tomorrow,” so the answer to the question is at the heart of our mission.  There’s now a growing interest in combining design functionality with the broader geographical context that geospatial tools offer in order to engage more deeply in land use planning. We find ourselves revisiting our tagline with a renewed sense of what spatial design can become.

Our use of the term spatial design was a way to address the many disciplines that use geospatial tools to effect change with an eye toward more efficient and sustainable communities. While it’s recognized that many practitioners of geospatial technology have some element of design in their job description, a predominant amount of GIS work still revolves around data creation without an eye toward affecting change. The idea of spatial design is to get out from behind database maintenance, engage in spatial analysis, and provide direction and goals from the data we have amassed.

The Design Process

Design in this context is a verb, where practitioners are using the geospatial toolset to gain a greater understanding of their project space, and are using these inputs to better manage all aspects of their work. The process of arriving at the final plan or management approach is a multi-step exercise, with feedback and input from others, and perhaps some starts and stops in the process. It’s more work to design than to simply accept the outcomes of our software routines. Design involves a give and take, and often times a return to the drawing board, but good design rewards with a much better and long-term answer to the problems that we set out to overcome.

Too often, poor design is really just a lack of design. When engineers and architects take the parameters of building code and incorporate those into their structure, without worry about how it affects the flow of people in a structure or the aesthetics of the building, they’re not taking the time to design. When we see a column in the middle of a stairway or a building site that won’t drain after a heavy rain, it’s mostly a matter of too little time spent going over the inputs and outcomes of the work.

Spatial with Design

When we began the site more than a year ago, the combination of the words spatial and design wasn’t a term that could be found in a Google search. When I searched today, I was surprised to find a Wikipedia entry that combines many aspects of my own way of thinking.

The concept involves engaging both people and space at a variety of scales to arrive at a more livable place. The Wikipedia entry indicates input from a number of disciplines including architecture, landscape architecture and curiously interior design. It indicates that spatial design is included as an area of study in many institutions within the United Kingdom, and states that spatial design is a discipline in itself.

I wouldn’t attribute spatial design to its own separate discipline, but rather as a multidisciplinary approach to achieve a more holistic understanding of place, and a better reasoned approach to living in harmony with nature. The fact that spatial design is being taught as a discipline and profession is an exciting development, and an opportunity for more focused efforts to align tools and foster research into the meaning and potential for this new way of thinking.

Sustainability

While sustainability was a big buzzword for businesses and politicians in 2008, it’s not a fad that will be gone tomorrow. The idea of doing good, while doing well has long-term relevance, and we’re just beginning to see what software and systems can contribute to the effort to account for the needs of our planet while also addressing the economic bottom line.

Spatial design is an approach that is in direct alignment with sustainability. The disciplined evaluation of projects and places within a broader geographic context considers potential conflicts and takes a long-term view of the challenges of competing interests that need to be aligned.

There’s a good deal of work to be done to engage the many disciplines that could benefit from the spatial design approach. Architects, engineers and urban planners stand to gain great benefits from the broader context of a digital city model and integrated design and geospatial views for urban planning. Those involved in utility and transportation planning are already engaged to some degree with spatial design, but greater inputs regarding their system performance could greatly improve their design and improve efficiency. And there are disciplines involved in agriculture and forestry that stand to benefit from more active planning that take into account our changing natural systems in the face of climate change.

We’re at a time now where technologies for digital design, spatial systems, sensors and visualization are maturing. Spatial design takes a new and proactive approach of combining these technologies to address the challenges of our changing world.

Read what Jeff Thurston has to say on this topic here.

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