Date of Award

Spring 5-30-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Industrial Design

Department

Industrial Design

First Advisor

Shona Kitchen

Second Advisor

Ayako Maruyama

Third Advisor

Elizabeth Kisten Keller

Abstract

As residents of the United States, all of us have benefited from the resources that this land provides. Some of these resources are responsibly managed, like some logging operations and grazing land. Some are much more harmful, like hydroelectric dams that have drowned Indigenous lands, and block natural habitat. Whether through development or extraction, we as humans have the special ability to drastically change the world around us in a very short amount of time. In a time of rapid environmental change, we need to find ways to better connect, observe, and assess the landscape so that as a society, we can make more informed and compassionate choices on how to manage our shared resources. When we talk about stopping climate change, we have to stop talking about returning to a nostalgic past. We have to start talking about a hopeful but different future with a very rough patch in between.

The United States Federal Government has long mapped, and surveyed the land of this country to promote expansion, extraction, and tourism. I am proposing a set of tools, distributed by a new branch of the Department of the Interior, the Civilian Corps of Landscape Reassessment, as a means to give citizens a point of access to the discourse and conversation around land issues and create collaboration between citizens and through active participation, increase personal investment.

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