Course Description: The course will examine two overlapping topics: health and housing needs of the region’s aging population. The intent is to use GIS to map and analyze the elements of the health/housing/ accessibility issues for the aging population of the region.

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. One third of the course reviews and extends core principles of geographic analysis and modeling as expressed in GIS technology. Two thirds of the course will be devoted to collaborative teamwork to define, structure, analyze, and present the resolution of planning problems posed by a “client”. The major "client" is the Jefferson Board for Aging. JABA's mission is add dignity, security, independence, and fulfillment to the lives of older adults and their families. They are concerned with housing, health services, and accessibility to services essential for persons to remain home and to stay active and productive.

Too often decisions on housing, transportation, health services, social facilities, commercial centers and the arts are made in isolation of one another and with little regard to how they might impact a growing elderly population. Maps creatively visualize spatial relationships between these elements. They can link land, building and activities thereby displaying the “landscape of the aging”.

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. Students unfamiliar with the current verision of ArcGIS (9.0) will be expected to independently pursue basic tutorials early in the course.

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. 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. Yet, any science or technology is socially derived and limiting. While the major focus of the course is plan-making, the reflective nature of structuring problems, finding useful data and appropriating productive tools will help highlight the limitations as well as the power of GIS technology.

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.

GIS technology is becoming “object oriented” in concept and implementation. The “object-oriented” paradigm will serve as an organizing device for understanding both the technology and the project subject matter.

Working collaboratively with the professional staff of a local agency will simulate the professional practice often encountered in consulting.

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. 40%
Student work on projects will require teamwork.  Evaluation will be on both the quality of the product and the quality of the production. .   60%

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

Readings:

Texts: Yet to be determined.

Reference: Olmsby, Getting to Know ArcGIS 2 nd ed. 2

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.