Geodesigning Our Future

This book examines how map-based collaboration software can facilitate negotiations in areas undergoing contentious pressures for significant change. Based on case studies from Israel, it aims to introduce a useful model of planning implementation as an outcome of complex interaction to reduce the gap between planning and urban reality. It puts an analytical realist foundation for a productive discussion of the role of future planning and bares meaningful scientific contributions to the general frame of the negotiating process and implementation, which still needs further research and elaboration. Geodesign, a cutting-edge planning approach that is rooted in the history of planning practice, has become one of the most popular approaches for sustainable planning and design activities after 2000s. Planners tend to think of design at a site scale, but geodesign covers a variety of scales, bridging the gap between the regional and the local contexts. This is important because to be practically effective and politically prudent, "smart growth" plans need to make sense across a spectrum of scales and disciplines. This ranges from design, urban design, community planning, town and city planning, and regional planning, up to planning for mega-regions.