The Path to Geodesign : ! The Family Car of Digital Landscape Architecture ? Brian ORLAND

Decision-making about the environment is a fundamentally critical task – just like driving to work, collecting groceries and taking children to school. Very few drivers know much beyond the basic operating principles of their cars yet they are completely competent to use these technically sophisticated tools safely and efficiently. Ordinary people also make decisions about design and planning every day although they are not designers, programmers, ecologists or visualization experts. Are we confident that the geodesign systems we put in their hands will result in safe and efficient outcomes? Geodesign has emerged rapidly as a useful expression integrating the traditional core skills of the landscape designer and planner with the advanced tools that have been the focus of Digital Landscape Architecture. It promises to be a critical general-purpose decision-support tool for landscape architectural design and planning. It arrives at a time of great demands for stakeholder engagement in design and planning decisions, and for evidence-based design. I will use the analogy of the family car to explore the nature and promise of geodesign as a general-purpose design tool, how it might proceed and how it could be evaluated.