Prerequisites: Open to upper level undergraduate and graduate students. While preference given to Planning students, students from other disciplines are welcome. GIS experience or coursework highly desired.

Course Description: As a planning application course the major focus will be applying GIS methods to current planning problems with the aim of preparing a professional product in a workshop setting. The first third of the course reviews and extends core principles of geographic analysis and modeling as expressed in GIS technology. The latter two thirds of the course will be devoted to collaborative teamwork to define, structure, analyze, and present the resolution of a planning problem posed by a “client”.

The project in the Spring 2006 will be to develop a high-end GIS based assessment tool for the Transportation and Housing Alliance. We will work with the TJPDC to develop a prototype set of mapping and assessment procedures that can be applied in other planning districts. This tool is to help assess the spatial accessibility of housing and transportaton needs of "those residents who are disadvantaged, by developmental or physical disability, those who cannot find safe affordable housing, those who lack adequate transportation optons, and for those unemployed or under employed." Often these people are also the older citizens of our communities.

 

Pedagogical Intentions: Planning problems and plan-making have a dual focus on people and place. The former bring values, aspirations, expectations and capacities to the situation. Future populations are not yet present. The place dimension focuses on spatial resources and spatial interaction. Modeling these components require creative and systematic thinking. Geographic Information Systems represent both a science and a technology for addressing these.

Here we will especially seek to understand the needs of those persons with disabilities and how planning for those needs can also help create a more open, equitable and sustainable community for all citizens.

Geographic Information Systems are themselves complex blending of people, data, software, hardware and procedures. Therefore the planning and management of the projects themselves becomes as much a subject of theory and praxis as the topic of the project. Clear professional communication to different audiences often involved in planning will also receive emphasis.

Working in a group setting with a complex set of problems and products will require additional learning in project management, group dynamics, website preparation, presentations and document preparation.

Requirements : Individual students will be evaluated on their acquisition of basic skills and on their individual reflection on their work. This will be evaluated by means of an individual portfolio of products and reflective memoranda. 30%
Student work on projects will require teamwork.  Evaluation will be on both the quality of the product and the quality of the production. .   70%

(Collaborative participation will be explicitly assessed and deficiency could count for as much as 15% of the course grade.)

 

Readings:

Texts: Olmsby, Getting to Know ArcGIS

Other references will be available in the Fine Arts and GEOSTAT libraries.

Some readings and references will be electronically available on the internet or Toolkit.