Exploring Historical San Francisco with GIS

In-class Assignment

Exploring The History of Cities with GIS

Create an illustrated document describing the geography of San Francisco, Boston, Kyoto, Osaka, or Tokyo (Japan) in terms of how it has changed historically. Please print out at least three maps with a paragraph of explanation.

Set-up:
Open ArcExplorer 4

Click on the "add layers button"

Under "Data Sources" click on the '+ 'to the left of 'WWW' and then click 'Add Website.'

The 'WWW Conection' dialogue box appears. Copy and paste the following URL - http://64.124.57.76 and click 'ok.'

A list of map services should appear under 'Data Sources.' Highlight either San Francisco, or Boston, or one of the Japanese cities and click the 'add layers' button in the upper left hand corner. The selected theme should appear in the legend of ArcExplorer 4. If you select one called Boston overview, or Kyoto overview, it will only display some contemporary features but no historical maps. Tokyo is listed as 'Japan' and covers the greater metro area.

The project should appear as a map of the city in the map view and set of layers in the legend.
Using what you know about GIS, investigate the changes that have occured to the city in the past. Use the "copy map image to file" feature to save maps illustrating what you found.
You will generate an illustrated html document with brief descriptions and maps.

Explore some of these relevant questions:

Find the original core of the city. Where has the city expanded to and why?
Determine the city's original reason for existence and its locational advantage. Why there?
Are there any irregularities in the layout of streets? How does the natural topography influence streets?
What technologies (communication, transportation, etc.) were most influential in shaping the city?
Have there been any major changes to the shoreline or the location of lakes?

To export images to Word, choose "copy map image to file" under the edit menu and save the image as a jpeg (.jpg) file. Open Word and under the insert menu, choose 'picture', then select 'from file' and search for the file in the "Look in" pop-up menu.

**Alternative to ArcExplorer 4:

Open http ://www.davidrumsey.com/GIS/sanfran.htm, or http://www.davidrumsey.com/GIS/boston.htm, or http://www.davidrumsey.com/japan/gis.html and read about the map collection.

Next - click on the link: View GIS Professional Browser (This shows the data through a webpage GIS).

U.S. Historical City Maps
City Maps from about.com
Maps of U.S. Metropolitan Areas (1970)
Links to city maps