Geodesign to address global change

Geodesign changes geography by design, by intentional change. It tightly couples the creation of proposals for change with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts and by systems thinking. Coming to a politically acceptable planning strategy inevitably is a negotiation among the people of the place, aided by design professionals and geographic scientists, and supported by information technologists. The digital tools of geodesign enable collaboratively negotiated consensus-building, based on diagrams of policies and projects, and produce an outcome which indicates that “It could be … or should be … something like this.” The focus of the International Geodesign Collaboration (IGC) is on further developing geodesign approaches to be able to address major regional and global challenges in their earliest, strategic planning stages. To do so in settings that are widely dispersed, differ widely in scale and in the extent of resources (skilled people and prepared data) requires a common communication and negotiation framework. The IGC framework has enabled multidisciplinary teams in multiinstitutional and multinational groups to collaborate in considering and responding to the increasing environmental, economic, and social impacts of development in a rapidly changing world.