The traditional role of designers is changing. With the increasing importance of addressing climate change-related issues, designers are more than ever before required to deal with increasing complexities from a trans-disciplinary perspective. In turn, transdisciplinary research requires unifying frameworks that can synthesise and embrace the different epistemologies, concepts, values and methods from different disciplines. Therefore, developing new ways of understanding, representing and navigating these complexities is critical, especially in the visual medium.

   To address this issue, multi-faceted hybrid Kumu maps were developed for this research. The maps are provided as a means of answering the research questions, which are examined through the aforementioned research-through-design methodology.

   Moreover, it is important that the Kumu maps as (geo) visualisation and analytical tool are situated in relation to the corresponding theoretical and critical discourse (which is addressed in Part III). Therefore, this research develops both an act of mapping (i.e. Kumu maps) and a telling of a story narrative (i.e. ethical and critical proposition of Urban Seascaping) that each influence each other. Furthermore, the development of the hybrid, multiscalar, temporal, networked mapping tool extends the ability of the LUDP disciplines to analyse and speculate the various ways we inhabit the meeting place between city and sea, human and nonhuman (which is explored in Part IV). Therefore, Urban Seascaping (illustrated in Figure 51 below) explores the inter-relationships between various spaces, actors and mediums.

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Figure 51. Urban Seascaping is a critical proposition and concept rooted in thinking from inter-relational and transdisciplinary perspectives. It is an approach to investigating the various inter-dependent relationships between city-sea (site/context/spaces), human-nonhuman (actors/stakeholders) and spatial-network maps (visual tools/ medium) in coastal cities. Urban Seascaping has a unique position of focusing on seaweed as the representative lens of the marine realm in the Anthropocene.