Introduction

Increasingly, geographic information holds the key to graceful and sustainable resolution of environmental, economic, and cultural conflicts around the world. Whether revitalizing troubled urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles or Lagos, addressing the root causes of regional environmental degradations, resolving territorial disputes among ethnic minorities, or tackling land reform in South Africa, South America, or the former Soviet Union, the Geographic Information Systems we devise will need to serve as common ground for such communication.

Many of these conflicts are inter-cultural, and in such a world the ethics of culturally appropriate representation become a matter of seeking frameworks which support communication rather than exacerbating the babel of disparate views. Discovering common ground that has meaning to all will be an even greater challenge, yet culturally subjective representations will serve their proponents less well whenever the system is meant to facilitate constructive communication with others whose perspectives may differ, and where the representation ignores, denies, or distorts relevant physical or scientific attributes.

Whether to problems of design or of conflict resolution, the best solutions are founded on a thorough exploration of disparate interests and on insightful communication to discover exchanges that expand what often otherwise appears to be a zero-sum pie. As with any good mediator, a geographic information system that serves as common ground needs not merely to be understood by all involved, but also to be trusted and accessible. Such systems will be useful to the extent that they provide facilities for the incorporation, comparison, and reconciliation of data, analyses, and representations from many sources and many perspectives.

What can we say about the relationship between the design of these systems and their subsequent influence on the difficult social choice processes they are to assist? In particular, amid the myriad related technical and institutional issues, what can we as Geographers best contribute to the effectiveness of such systems, and how can we help them to develop?

Catherine Dibble 27 June 2003