Urban and planning historians frequently focus on inherently spatial topics such as migration, segregation, gentrification, and suburbanization and rely on historical maps as primary sources, but they rarely use geographic information systems (GIS) as a research method for analyzing spatial patterns. This article considers the reasons that GIS is not used more, including longstanding ambivalence about quantitative methods and limited training opportunities. It then outlines ways in which GIS can uniquely inform historical research—by emphasizing underlying spatial processes, making spatial patterns visible, and transforming mapping into a process—in ways that can refine and challenge existing urban historical narratives. Finally, recommendations for overcoming existing barriers to historical GIS are presented.
Anderson, Margo.2007. Quantitative history. In The Sage handbook of social science methodology, ed. William Outhwaite and Stephen Turner, 246-63. London : SAGE.
2.
Bodenhamer, D.J.2008. History and GIS: Implications for the discipline. In Placing history, ed. Anne Kelly Knowles and Amy Hillier, 226. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press.
3.
Only articles featuring new research-not book reviews, special issue introductions, author responses, or obituaries-were reviewed and counted. All maps created for or by the author, as indicated in the map caption or by the author through e-mail correspondence, were considered ‘‘new,’’ regardless of the method of creation (GIS software, graphics software, or hand-drawn).
4.
Many of the authors whose articles were included in the review of the Journal of Planning History and the Journal of Urban History indicated through e-mail correspondence that they relied on graduate students, colleagues, friends, and relatives with superior drawing, graphics, or GIS skills to create their maps.
5.
See, for example, Knowles, A. K. ed. 2002. Past time, past place: GIS for history. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press; Knowles, A. K., and A. Hillier, eds. Placing history; and two issues of journals dedicated to historical GIS, also edited by Anne Kelly Knowles-Historical Geography, vol. 33, 2005 and Social Science History, vol. 24, 2000.
6.
See, for example, El, Paul, and Ian Gregory. 2007. Historical GIS: Technologies, methodologies, and scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Gregory, Ian. 2003. A place in history: A guide to using GIS in historical research. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
7.
Web site examples include ‘‘Beyond Steel: An Archive of Lehigh Valley Industry and Culture,’’ which uses fire insurance maps, city directories, and other primary sources to document the growth and decline of Lehigh Valley, http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/beyondsteel/gis/; John Logan’s ‘‘Albany People and Neighborhoods,’’ which includes census data and thematic maps for 1880, 1920, 1960, and 2000, http://maps.s4. brown.edu/website/albany/index.html; Amy Hillier’s ‘‘Mapping the Du Bois Philadelphia Negro,’’ which uses 1900 census data to recreate the Old Seventh Ward studied by W. E. B. Du Bois, www. mappingdubois.org; and Public History’s ‘‘African-Americans in Antebellum Boston,’’ which includes the research conducted by high school students of maps, directories, historical census, and other primary sources indicating where African Americans lived in Beacon Hill/the West End, http://www. primaryresearch.org/bh/.
8.
See Hillier, Amy. 2003. Redlining in <aut@>Philadelphia, Past <aut@>Time, Past Place; <aut@>Hillier, Amy. 2003. Spatial analysis of redlining: A methodological exploration. Journal of <aut@>Housing Research 14:137-67; Hillier, Amy. 2003. Redlining and the home owners’ loan corporation. Journal of Urban History 29:394-420; Hillier, Amy. 2005. Searching for red lines: Spatial analysis of lending patterns in Philadelphia, 1940 to 1960. Pennsylvania History 72:25-47; Hillier, Amy. 2005. Residential security maps & neighborhood appraisals: Home owners’ loan corporation & the case of Philadelphia,’’ Social Science History 29:207-33; and Amy Hillier, ‘‘Redlining in Philadelphia,’’ presentation on digital supplement CD-ROM to Placing History.
9.
Du Bois, W.E.B.1899. The Philadelphia Negro, 310-12. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.
10.
Du Bois, W.E.B.1899. The Philadelphia Negro , 404.
11.
The Seventh Ward GIS is available at http://venus.cml.upenn.edu/UPennSD_PhilaNegro/. To create thematic maps, select the ‘‘Thematic maps’’ tab and then choose from the map layers listed in the drop-down menu.
12.
Social Explorer is available at www.socialexplorer.com. The Web site includes a free version of the mapping with limited functionality and data as well as a subscription-based enhanced version.
13.
Wolfinger, James.2009. The limits of Black activism Philadelphia’s public housing in the depression and World War II. Journal of Urban History35:787-814.
14.
For an example of statistical analysis‘‘hot spot’’ analysis, see Hillier, ‘‘Searching for Red Lines,’’ pp. 39-40.
15.
Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2006. An inviting Parish: Community without locality in Postwar Italian Toronto. Canadian Historical Review 87:381-407; Stanger-Ross, Jordan. 2009. Where ethnicity went: The social geography of Italian life in Postwar Toronto and Philadelphia. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
16.
Hillier, ‘‘Searching for Red Lines,’’ p. 40.
17.
Clapper, Michael.2006. School design, site selection, and the political geography of race in postwarPhiladelphia . 5:241-63.
Geographer Diana Sinton(University of Redlands) used this phrase during a presentation at the Scholarly Communications Institute at the University of Virginia in June 2009.
21.
Clapper, ‘‘School Design, Site Selection, and the Political Geography of Race in Postwar Philadelphia.’’
22.
Stanger-Ross, ‘‘An Inviting Parish’’; Stanger-Ross, Staying Italian .
23.
See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html; http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/chisoc/;www.davidrumsey.com ; and http://www.philageohistory.org/geohistory/index.cfm;http://sanborn.umi.com/.
24.
Megan Cope and Sarah Elwood.2009. Qualitative GIS: A mixed methods approach. London: SAGE.
25.
Krygier, John, and Denis Wood.2009. ‘‘Ce n’est pas le monde. In Rethinking maps: New frontiers in cartographic theory, eds. Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin , and Chris Perkins.New York: Routledge.
26.
Mohl, Raymond. 2002. The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing, and the Freeway Revolt. Research Report, Poverty and Race Research Action Council; Caro, R. A. 1974. The power broker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York. New York: Random House; Metraux, Stephen. 1999. Waiting for the wrecking ball: Skid row in postindustrial Philadelphia. Journal of Urban History 25::690-715.
27.
Beauregard, R.A.2001. Federal Policy And Postwar Urban Decline: A case of government complicity? Housing Policy Debate12:129-51.
