Local people make up an important part of the geodesign team. But the team also needs people with technical experience who are able to identify, gather, analyze, and communicate information. The technical members of the geodesign team are selected to respond specifically to the study’s place and problem.
Steinitz suggests that four types of people are needed in a geodesign team: designers, scientists, technologists, and people of the place. Designers, scientists, and technologists make up the geodesign team, and each has a different but valuable role in the geodesign process. Designers are familiar with the process of change, scientists are familiar with interpreting types of data, and technologists are familiar with using tools to produce data. We will further discuss the roles of sciences at different scales next lesson, but in the geodesign team each member is responsible for acquiring, analyzing, and applying a type (or types) of data. For example, McHarg's Design with Nature illustrates how each project draws upon a wide variety of different but interconnected sciences and data sets. Refusal to collaborate with people from different disciplines who can provide and interpret different types of data will vastly narrow the study's ability to create designs that fit the needs of a place.
While geodesign teams need designers, scientists, and technologists with expertise specific to the project, working with specialists from different disciplines may not always be easy. Different disciplines have different lenses through which they see the world. They often have their own preferred methods and unique vocabularies, such as using certain words in discipline-specific ways. If team members from different disciplines are not aware of these vocabulary differences (if they are speaking different colloquial languages but do not realize it), they may find themselves inexplicably at odds with one another.
Team members also have different personalities, and these differences can impact team dynamics. One person’s idea may conflict with another’s, and when that happens people react differently to what they perceive as potential or real conflict. While a team exists to accomplish certain tasks or goals, a team also involves relationships between two or more people. In any relationship, conflicts will arise. How you choose to handle these conflicts can be crucial to both team relationships and team success. As members of geodesign teams, you will need to understand the nature of conflict and the choices you have when it comes to resolution.
We can summarize this portion of the lesson by saying that people are important. The geodesign process necessarily includes collaborating with people during multiple steps because people, their culture, and the physical qualities of a place are all important to developing a suitable problem-solving strategy.
With this in mind, let us now review the importance of context. The Steinitz framework provides a structured approach to leveraging local knowledge and building teams to gather appropriate information and make sense of the geographic context of the study area.