Rather than fixed geographies, Regions are spatial constructs shaped by dynamic relationships across multiple urban, rural, and ecological terrains. While planning and design disciplines have often centered urbanization as the dominant force of spatial transformation, this narrow lens obscures the broader systems of labor, land use, and ecosystem services that shape territories beyond the city. Regional theory offers a way to conceptualize these interdependencies, drawing attention to uneven development, extraction, and forms of governance that operate across multiple spatial typologies.

Mapping the Region approaches cartography as a representation method and mode of theoretical inquiry to reveal geographic relations and inform spatial practice. Drawing upon the entangled history of digital cartography, spatial analysis, and practice at the regional scale, this course offers both theoretical foundations and technical geospatial methods for regional definition and inquiry. Using Esri ArcGIS software, students will explore data models, methods of overlay, raster analysis, composite indices, network connectivity, remote sensing fundamentals, and spatial statistics in parallel with concepts of regionalism around infrastructures, climate, landscapes, and social formations.

Over the course of the seminar, students will pursue an independent research project positing a “theory of a region” using the atlas as a rhetorical and representative medium. This is the opportunity to deepen an individual research interest through spatial analysis and cartographic methods, and will culminate in a collectively authored Regional Atlas: a map-driven narrative of spatial form and design futures.