ABSTRACT
Sustainable development has come to summarize the acknowledged importance of non-destructive land-use. The idea has become widely accepted – perhaps because of its inherent constructive ambiguity, or perhaps because, like motherhood and apple pie, it is simply a notion that is hard to argue against. But unlike motherhood, it is not something to which an irrevocable commitment can arise from a moment of irrational passion and, unlike apple pie, it has no simple recipe. The challenge, as Geyer (1994) observes, is: How can dynamic communities with changing needs, aspirations and technologies maintain a non-destructive relationship with an environment that is itself dynamic and constantly changing? This clearly requires an adaptive process, and in the time frame that matters to us now, that adaptive process needs to be based on human intelligence and environmental information. Finding ways to optimize the use of available information and ensure that all providers and users of information have effective links to decision-making processes is an essential step towards sustainable development. GIS provides tools to discover, analyse and communicate the spatial relevance of data and information. A critical question still remains, however: How can high technology information management tools be
brought into the public forum in a way that fosters fairness and increases decision-making competence (Webler 1995) rather than increasing polarization and marginalization?
