The Geodesign Society: Harmonizing humanity with geospatial systems
You’re Invited to Participate in Our Planetary Regeneration
Join a group of visionaries, leaders, and creatives building HOMEdash, a global operating system designed with geospatial technology to help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
In the beginning, architecture was alchemy.
Kings, priests, and holy sages built living places for both body and spirit, they designed spaces with locally available materials, were guided by the land where to build, and communities collectively designed their systems for living lightly on the Earth.
In those times, careful hands tediously crafted functional art which was the legacy of a lifetime, these buildings stood for something, or else they didn’t stand at all and were made to dissolve when no longer needed anymore. Settlements grew into villages which bloomed into cities, those cities became states and then states matured into nations, and that is where we stand today in our modern hegemony. We can trace this mode of being all the way back to the Greeks, and even before then. To build is to have power, walls and infrastructure can easily became the weapons of the conqueror, or the tools of a ruler.
Today this is still true, in the meta modernism of 2022, to build is to have power. It is time we take this power back, as a global society, and together stand in our power as creators of our reality, one and all.
As an architect, I’ve studied the discipline of how to best wield this power to create societies. Since 2008 I’ve been asking myself, how do we plan cities, roads, economies, entire societies so that they take into consideration as much of life as possible to the detriment of none? I’ve traveled around the world to dozens of countries studying cities and settlements, observing the way different peoples live together, and with the land. Motivated by a humanitarian desire to preserve for all beings, I am constantly in search of the way to a society where everyone has access to land, housing, and food. Are you also in search of the highest quality of life we can achieve for all with minimal effort through spontaneous cooperation?
Over the last ten years of working in sustainable development, I’ve noticed the pain of the many tradeoffs involved in conservation, ecosystem regeneration, and community growth. Land stewardship asks us to make choices, which require a lot of listening, and a great deal of care and attention must go into attuning to a place in order to develop a project. One project I worked on, to protect the last dry forest in the central valley of Costa Rica, had the support of hundreds of local neighbors and several international groups, ample opportunity to make a substantial global impact, and a proven model with a world-class team of designers… but the project never got funding and thus never took off. After more than two years of volunteering my time to this grass roots initiative, it died. When this happened, I realized our project wasn’t alone. I had seen hundreds of amazing initiatives led by qualified, dedicated, and skilled people fail because of lack of external support, awareness about the problem they were trying to solve, and willingness to invest in new solutions. I wondered, wouldn’t it be great if there were a way for people around the world to see the great initiatives being developed, learn from them, and participate in the replication of successful models at a large scale?
Then, I thought back to my work when I was volunteering for an NGO at the United Nations and I remembered the vision we had discussed of a dashboard for helping members collaborate and be held accountable for the 2030 goals. I was reminded of the passion for mapping I’d felt early on in my career back when I was living in Philadelphia and discovering the wonder of GIS for the very first time. Last summer, I committed full time to birthing HOMEdash and have been bringing it into the world through the support of several incredible organizations.
I am exploring geospatial technologies as a fundamental tool for organizing and optimizing human resources. How do we weigh the complex interdependencies, model parameters, and monitor key performance indicators in one open data hub to support and inform coordinated decisions across a global network of people and organizations who are doing a lot of good with little resources?
How do we team up and align our collective efforts to achieve maximum impact with the least amount of effort?
The task at hand is monumental, the undertaking is huge, and I think we are just the ones to choose it. Join us to explore these questions together.
You are invited to join the Geodesign Society.
The Geodesign Society has been conceived of as a decentralized and autonomous organization putting energy towards the generation of a new design methodology for planetary regeneration which revolves around the use of geospatial tools and processes.
Since 2014 when I began my Masters in Geodesign at Philadelphia University I’ve been fascinated by this technology which is fundamental to the practice of sustainable development. In 2017 I shared about it on the floor of the United Nations, and even began the process of implementing it through the national governments of Jamaica and Kenya. Since then, I’ve noticed many roadblocks to its implementation.
Not enough time or money to get governments up to speed on the available technologies
Not enough innovation in the technology and software itself
Too expensive to implement the technology and human resource
Little awareness of the application of geospatial tech
General resistance to change
I have observed a great deal of potency at the intersection of regenerative art, climate tech, and earth sciences, as well as the unifying thread of data visualization and storytelling hence, HOMEdash, an open source decentralized platform for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. I’ve conceived of it as
The dashboard of a tokenized sustainable development game which operates in web 4.0
An impact investment hub which monitors the progress of regenerative projects around the world in real time
A citizen science tool implementing AI to provide insights about real sustainable actions which can be taken in one’s local area
Watch the video to learn more and hear a brief overview of HOMEdash, the dashboard for Spaceship Earth.
Be at home wherever you are
Through my last six years in the geodesign field, I’ve come into conversation with many people who care about consciously designing a better world, and their excitement always lights me up. I never tire of the wonder in someone’s eyes when I show them the prototype for the first time and they discover the power of maps and 3D modeling to expand consciousness and increase awareness.
There’s something about being able to literally hold the world in your hands which makes everything seem much brighter and more full of possibility. Looking at a globe sparkling with data points almost always sets my heart on fire. As we design a new world, write new myths, and develop new ways of living in harmony with the earth, it is our privilege to witness the unfolding of a new holistic collective consciousness at the frontiers of human evolution, and also our task. To observe, listen, and watch the change taking place is already a noble task, for in this way we are also participants in the unfolding.
For the last three years I’ve been holding space as part of a decentralized autonomous organization called Project Synarchy with another dear priestess who practices law and writes masterpieces of magical fiction. Together, she and I have been prayerfully listening to the collective gestation process, attentive to the birthing of something which feels like a New Earth. HOMEdash is one product of this listening, it is a small fruit born from the large tree of a much larger vision which is being revealed as it becomes clear.
The next step to make HOMEdash a global operating system which is the most inclusive, collaborative, and participatory possible is to establish the Geodesign Society as a forum for the kind of academic, scientific, and inspiring conversations which come up in the process of invoking a better world.
Design science is what we call being an artist, scientist, and innovator all at once. If you feel the call, join us.
Some early partners in this work are from Ziome, Luminance, Project Ark, Wuji Games, Wiase Foundation, Design Science Studio, and the Born Global Foundation. Thank you so much, this would not be nearly as fun or possible without you!
Learn more about geodesign here.
Sign up below to receive the invitation for our initiation event on 2/22/2022.
Join us for this special opportunity to be part of the early group testing HOMEdash, driving development, and making decisions about how to design and use this new climate tech solution for gamifying sustainable development and optimizing collaboration. More information coming soon, sign up below to stay informed.
