Landscape and purpose: Modeling the functional and spatial organization of the lan

The objective of this research is to help expand the range of applications and questions that may be approached with a GIS by developing a model that explicitly addresses human purpose in connection with the functional organization of space. Recent approaches that seek to expand the kinds of change that can be represented with GIS continue to follow almost exclusively the analytic traditions of conventional science, even though GIS also seeks to represent features, patterns and phenomena that are the result of human design. This dissertation draws on ideas from the normative design disciplines to develop a conceptual and logical model that expands the capacity of GIS as a tool for understanding spatial configurations and related changes that arise from human purposes. The key idea is that any purposive human action that involves space may be understood with respect to (1) a 'higher' context of more general objectives and a 'lower' context of sub-goals on a vertical dimension, and (2) sequences of functional precedents and goals on a horizontal dimension. Together, these vertical and horizontal dimensions correspond to an informal or formal, past or future plan for supporting specific human purposes. The purposeful components of a plan map to spatial locations that have been adapted to serve corresponding functions. This provides a basis for interpreting and anticipating spatial configurations and spatial changes that result from human design, in particular, the patterns and changes of human landscapes. I illustrate these principles with a series of empirical case studies showing how knowledge of the plan for a landscape elucidates the practical reasons for (1) observed or anticipated spatial compositions and configurations at multiple granularities of purpose and space, (2) spatial changes in locations adapted for specific human purposes, and (3) spatial changes that correspond with changes in temporal patterns of human activity.