Geodesign in Practice: What About the Urban Designers?

Abstract

This paper acknowledges the great potential of Geodesign. It notes, however, that barriers exist for urban designers to use GIS-based tools. An experiment we conducted with students and interviews with practitioners seem to confirm this claim. We identify four main barriers for the usage of GIS-based tools by urban designers: (1) impotence to handle unquantifiable issues, (2) (perceived) restriction of creativity, (3) limited possibility for fuzziness, and (4) existing habits need to be changed. Based on the interviews, we provide tentative solutions to overcome these barriers. The paper concludes by pointing out future research directions, in particular into a holistic user perspective of GIS-based tools in combination with Geodesign.