CONCLUSION
This paper provides an overview of innovation occurring in the technological and theoretical world of GIS. Innovations in software and method are pushing well beyond the conventional application of GIS and developing tools that could vitally improve the practice of landscape architecture. GIS now supports early integration into the design process, offers new analysis techniques that expand awareness of neighborhood values, and eliminates social barriers to technology.
Much of this work is being produced in humanities, social science, and geography departments at a number of universities. Notably lacking in the literature is significant representation by landscape architects. This is unsettling because the questions being pursued and innovations being realized have great potential and direct application to landscape architecture by their ability to connect fact and value.(Talen & Shah, 2007) There are notable exceptions of course, (Crewe, 2001; Dangermond, 2009; Juarez & Brown, 2008; Steinitz, 2003) but on the whole, landscape architecture practice is behind the times.
Landscape architects remain in the conventional era of GIS that is based in positivist and instrumental forms of decision making. They have yet to recognize the ability and benefit of digitizing qualitative knowledge or the fact that conventional GIS presents a god’s eye view of the world that erases social, political, and economic contexts. This is a hobbling condition for an industry responsible for building human environments based on community needs. If landscape architects take seriously their role as community builders, then they must embrace GIS as an exploratory design tool and elevate its application beyond elementary inventory and analysis.