Abstract
This study analyzes the graphic design of 19th-century urban guidebooks to learn how readers conceived of the city and their social roles. San Francisco guidebooks, from a collection published between 1870 and 1915, are categorized by layout and navigation aids. The author notes a shift from guides, which are designed as nonlinear narrative reference tools, to those which have linear narratives. Technological, political, societal and psychological aspects of this transition are questioned. The urban guidebook is contextualized within a discussion of a greater information explosion in the late 19th century, the growth of San Francisco, and changes in the public sphere. The study relates the transition in guidebook design to alterations in public culture and asks what legacy these changes in geographic reflection might impress upon contemporary maps of the urban world, and the display of complex information systems in general.
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