Computers, Society, and Nature

It is a good question to ask what is the most important component of GIS, or who contrives the ‘Real’ in GIS. In order to clarify this problem we come to a series of context and communication problems due to the large argument in this field. Critical theory has been applied in the paper published by Aitken et al. in 1995, attempting to clarify these problems. Authors present the relationship between communication and GIS development, but the changes of GIS in recent research should not be overlooked. Geographic information science, sometimes referred to a kind of toll making process, is largely impacted by the advance of new technologies. Here I only talk about the development of communication technologies in GIS research.

Remote sensing, web 2.0, mobile technologies, all these technologies change how people obtain geospatial information and how they communicate with each other. With remote sensing, spectral information enables object based classification and data analysis, to utilize computers to extract geospatial information from satellite image data. Web 2.0, which provides a new platform for geospatial information exchange, begins to change how people access and contribute geospatial data. And mobile technologies enables the idea of GIS anywhere, with the development of cell phone, wearable computer, wireless sensor network, to name a few here.

Another problem we should pay attention to in communication technologies is information verification. With the development of mobile technologies, GIS applications which collect geospatial information through text message begin to emerge (e.g., Ushahidi). However, there is no guarantee about whether the geospatial information provided by users is reliable. Therefore, information verification technologies should be explored in GIS, due to the large amount of information is impossible to check with human operators.

–cyberinfrastructure

It was interesting to read Couclelis’ article in conjunction with Aitken and Michel’s article, as they both highlighted the effect strategic planning has on communities. A frequent occurrence in urban planning is when community groups are given a few options or strategies to select from, the pros and cons of which have already been analyzed. This process, according to some, engages the public in the planning process. What often occurs, however, is that one or two of the options are portrayed in a positive light in comparison to the others. The natural, more logical choice for citizens, therefore, is the more attractive looking option, which is coincidentally the one planners wanted. This notion reflects greatly upon issues of promoting misleading information, which I discussed in my last post.

I particularly enjoyed the aspects of Couclelis’s article that focussed on storytelling. I think that instead of constructing options or strategies for the public to choose from, engaging in dialogue to determine the wants and needs of the community (as well as the fears and dislikes), which then informs strategies and options is a much more comprehensive approach. The important difference between these two approaches is that the first merely attempts to achieve a specific goal, for example to reduce travel times along a transit corridor by (1) road expansion or (2) building rapid transit. The second approach, on the other hand, enables planners to question a myriad of objectives, which arise because of storytelling. This is sometimes referred to as the multiple objectives approach.

In this transit project, perhaps it is discovered that reducing pollutants caused by vehicle emissions is actually the leading concern of the community. Preserving the character of the neighbourhood may be another major issue. From this approach, it may be understood that neither of the original goals may be suitable for the community, and that others should be explored. This inevitably increases the amount of effort required and creates a more complex planning process, but it arguably allows for more meaningful alternatives to be created.

The importance of GIS is in modeling and comparing the alternatives generated by this method. The objectives stated by the community can be weighed against each other and models can be compared. For example, a GIS may aid in determining that all transit improvement options share the benefit of reducing pollutants by 5%. This feature, therefore, can be removed from the analysis and allow for better, more transparent comparison of options.

– jeremy

I don’t have a background in planning, so have relatively little to comment on Couclelis’ article. What I don’t understand is why planners have abandoned the strategic approach, and instead focus on what seems to be contemporary problem mitigation. Sure, there have been failures in strategic planning – some of those new towns and new housing projects in the UK come to mind, but how are we supposed to try to implement values of sustainability and similar without such an approach?

I’d also like to ask, where does GIS come into this article? It certainly comes in when the author throws around statements like “[planning should be] better integrated with certain informal techniques designed to promote its normative and future-oriented dimensions”. Wait a minute…normative dimensions and GIS? There are some things GIS can and cannot do. How are we supposed to take a ‘normative’ approach when planning with GIS? When you put an input into a model and get your output, should it have some kind of normative quality to it? How does a model even do that? I’m not saying that a model is necessarily positive – your output is just more likely to be occur when following a certain set of constraints, but how do we generate output that promotes the normative dimension of planning?

-Peck

In the 1960’s an 70’s, GIS models—guided by rational instrumental planning processes—put the needs of the economy before citizens. This occurred in the form of massive urban renewal projects and, according to Stuart Aitken and Suzanne Michel, a lack of dialogue and communication was to blame. In accordance with the Chicago School of urban ecology, laws and models were derived, which revealed the secrets of urban dynamics. In order to position the community at the centre of the planning process and to avoid planning mistakes of the past, Aitken and Michel posit that GIS must be fully recognized as a tool in a process and the community should always remain at the centre of discussion. Does this process, then, transition GIS from a science to a tool?

While it is often assumed that the role of GIS in the planning process is an objective one, I feel that our current planning practices still rely on the rational instrumental planning process. As an example, the subject of misguiding community residents reminded me of a residential development project currently under way in Vancouver. Plans were made by the developer and formally submitted to the City. At some point in the proposal process, the project’s renderings—which were meant to address resident’s concerns that the building was too tall—were identified by local residents as inaccurate portrayals. As one can see in the images below, the developer’s representation of the project (A) is quite different from the city’s (B) and even more so in comparison to one made by a community member (C).

From: http://vancouver.openfile.ca/vancouver/text/tensions-rize-mount-pleasant

Aitken and Michel posit that individuals and/or organizations manipulate communication in order to legitimize political agendas and to exclude community members and I think that this development project is a good illustration of this occurring in real life. Using this as an example, I agree with Peck in that citizen awareness is crucial in understanding the planning process. If it were not for educated citizens who understood the role image manipulation has, the inaccuracy of the renderings may have never been realized.

I believe, however, that it is also the role of planning organizations to properly inform citizens, and I think that is where the authors’ concerns arise. A GIS potentially enables the spreading of skewed information, and this brings us back to the role of communication. Because a dialogue was in place with (informed) citizens, the planning process (and, therefore, the role of GIS) was arguably improved. Further, because data manipulation was caught, the marginalization of more locally grounded public discourses—those trying to gain “footholds in the planning process” by using accurate portrayals—was avoided.

– jeremy

I feel that Aitken and Michel are slightly overreacting. “GIS Hegemony in Planning”? Those are some strong words right there. I feel that this article may be a bit outdated, having been written in 1995. Indeed, the cited predictions about the future net worth of the GIS industry were gross underestimates. 600mn systems and 6bn USD global industry worth? That’s nothing. According to a Wikipedia article (original source no longer available – yea I know), the GIS industry is was valued at 400bn yuan (63bn USD at current exchange rates) in 2007 in China alone. I don’t know whether the authors were truly appreciative of what GIS has done for us, and so instead chose to focus on criticising it.

One of their issues, if I understood correctly, was that GIS systems give too much ‘authority’ to those that use them. GIS has made doing analysis and making maps very quick and easy to do, and increased accessibility of GIS software/hardware has enabled more people to do such analysis. The authors worry that we trust in the output from the people using GIS too much. That we don’t scrutinise the underlying methods and assumptions, and that we are merely pushing buttons instead of thinking about what we are doing. In response to their urban planning examples of failures due to over reliance on GIS models, I would say that it is merely a matter of education. The kinds of models and assumptions you get in GIS are based on other domains such as urban planning, so blaming GIS will only get you so far. If you know your urban planning theory or ecology or whatever subject, you will be able to look more critically at: whether the output matches established theory, and whether the computations done in the GIS was appropriate. If you want people to truly understand what’s going on, then they have to educate themselves. GIS though, can still be useful to those with rudimentary knowledge. Many make use of statistical tests without trying to remember the exact formulas behind them. All they have to remember are the required inputs and how to interpret the results. In terms of planning – there will still be an urban planning expert sitting behind that GIS, doing the analysis. For that person, the GIS will be an extension for the field of urban planning; an enabler for the researcher to do more things more quickly. Even if they look at GIS as simply a tool, they will still understand how it works. If they don’t, then the city council should hire someone else.

Another problem they had was that the ‘interested citizen’ does not get fed all the details, but instead just gets filtered information prepared by others. Again, this is another area where the article may be out of date. Right now, it is much easier to get hold of data than in 1995 due to the internet. Whether or not information is released is not a reason to blame GIS – rather, these tend to be more legal issues that should not be in the scope of CGIS.

-Peck

The article written by Couclelis on models and their role and integration into land use planning states that the “systematic effort to understand what makes certain things about the future predictable and others not, or how to prepare for genuinely unpredictable futures, have so far had only a negligible impact on land-use planning and modeling” (p.1360). This statement suggests to me that land-use planning and modeling are not considering the complete picture in that the assumptions held are that one can predict the future and that when one is not successful, some reasons for the failure are not considered. The two issues mentioned in the quote both relate to our acceptance and greater consideration of uncertainty in the future which I feel should be very carefully examined when attempting to plan for the future. Relating this a little to critical GIS, if we fail to consider all factors underlying a system, it would be negligent particularly from the science side with the modelling, and the final product could be altered and manipulated to send a particular message.

-Outdoor Addict

I enjoyed reading this article and see many parallels between the author’s arguments and the goals of critical GIS. Couclelis argue that planning has lost its future-oriented approach and is absorbed by operational and managerial tasks. She urges planners and modelers to incorporate scenario writing, visioning and storytelling into PSS. Although I understand the gist of PSS, it would have been helpful if the author had offered a description of what the system consists of. How is it different for conventional GIS software? Are there functionalities that allow easy integration of scenarios?

The 3 methods advocated in the articles are qualitative in nature. “Models are based on science; planning is about policy” (1359) indicate a tension between quantitative and qualitative approaches. This exact tension experienced by GIS practitioners and social theorist is what gave rise to Critical GIS. Large amounts of work is being done in Qualitative GIS with the goal to incorporate different types of data into GIS, such as in-depth interviews, ethnography studies, emotions and even sounds. Some researchers have also employed mixed methods, that is, using quantitative and more personal qualitative datasets. I will refrain from saying too much here because I will be taking about it tomorrow. This are in Critical GIS is definitely promising for scenario writing, visioning and storytelling.

Figure 1: Scale Openess (Source: Scale and Hiearchy Theory from http://forestlandscape.wisc.edu/courses/Landscape565spr11/handouts/565%202011%20lec%202.5%20ScaleHierarchy18Jan2011.pdf)

On another notes, Couclelis writes, “Land-use and land-cover change are themselves issues spanning the local-to-global spectrum so that changes at one geographic scale may have significant repercussions at several other scales and times” (1358). This idea of events having effects for multiple scales was brought up during the lecture on “Scale” [Figure 1]. To be able to define and visualize these inter-scale interactions in GIS will be increasingly important as the world becomes more connected. This capability will allow us to get a more complete picture of consequences from a certain disturbance/event. For example how “open” is the city of Longueuil to changes in immigration trends from Asia? Or from changes from consumer preferences living in Germany? Analysis like these cannot be easily carried out in GIS because the system requires all the layers to be in the same scale. When will GIS be able connect places on two different map that do not match in scale?

Ally_Nash

The critical GIS article by Aitken and Michel brought forward once again the concept of homogeneity in GIS through the proposal of having a universal GIS which would be “flexible enough to accommodate the demands of locally based, micro-scale uses”. I would generally say that I don’t believe that any type of miracle universal GIS could be created to deal with planning issues anywhere on the planet particularly if the GIS were produced by a single company like ESRI or SPANS. As far as I know (feel free to let me know otherwise!) companies are out to meet user needs and to make money and to do so, they must cater to their users but arguably only the majority of their users in the interests of time and profit.

What I wonder is: could the geoweb play a role in producing a GIS that caters to a far broader variety of users and allows these users to build on the GIS to improve it for specific purposes and, in the context of planning, for specific locales? The paper does not deal with this concept likely due to technological evolution since it was written in 1995. At that time, users could access the internet but not necessarily contribute to its content in any way. Today, users can create vast amounts of information as well as software and this kind of power could be harnessed to create a universal GIS with many components for a variety of users, uses and places.

Another necessary aspect of a universal GIS is that it would have to have different possible levels of analysis to serve the experts and the naive users. This would in turn rely on both experts and naive users contributing to the online GIS, something that may not happen. Additionally, such a GIS would not be capable of ensuring naive users are using the level of analysis geared to them as opposed to a higher level for research purposes. To assist in solving this problem, I would say users need to be educated about GIS and how to use it but that perhaps if they chose not to learn all the technical details, they could still use the level of the GIS geared toward them.

-Outdoor Addict

Couclesis’s article on planning support systems appears to contradict the communicative model of Aitken’s piece on critical GIS. Couclesis argues that planning models have suffered a trade-off effect of including public sentiment in brainstorming sessions at the expense of hard expertise. The author draws a sharp distinction between the social fluidity of planning and the technical-objectivity of models.

I am uncomfortable with the assertion that participatory planning has a negative impact on the scientific and expert rigor of its products. The more relevant issue is inviting and drawing in an appropriate audience for the task at hand. Locals of an area have detailed knowledge of how processes affect them that rivals scientific knowledge. More often than not, their reporting of changes in the system is more timely and appropriate for model corrections than scientifically verified corrections (the convenience and fitness vs. rigor and accuracy argument). The challenge, as Couclesis points out, is to ensure the mutual cooperation of public and experts. As a geographer it also seems silly to paint experts as divorced from the social implications of their work; wouldn’t experts be the most aware of the limitations of their work? As GIS-users, wouldn’t experts also be grateful for the wealth of knowledge VGI and cooperation with the public produces?

Finally, the author’s suggestion that “neither the reactive response to changing circumstances nor the futile reliance on forecasts built on variations of business-as-usual scenarios can deal with the mix of pattern and noise that is the future.” initially confused me. It represents a key understanding though that linear extrapolations are insufficient for temporal analyses since one change may have a disproportionately large impact on other factors in the future. In such an unpredictable case, aggregating to a larger temporal scale is a step in reducing uncertainty. A more bold approach may be to rely on a mosaic of deep local understandings to represent a process across a larger extent. Such a method would be incredibly dynamic and may produce counter intuitive results such as those revealed by agent based modeling.

-Madskiier_JWong