Alan and I are considering develop a project on how Carleton’s campus has grown and evolved over time, what kind of decisions did the college made as it expanded in a limited amount of space, and what kinds of potential negotiations Carleton might have with the town of Northfield and its surrounding environment.
Sources of Data: We plan on using archival data retrieved from Carleton’s online archive. We will be extracting data mostly from aerial or satellite images of Carleton Campus to observe how Carleton’s campus looked like throughout the 1900s. There are also historical maps of the college arboretum that includes the entire campus of the college.
Processes: We plan to use ArcGIS and other tools to build a series of maps over time. With a time-series of maps, we can animate them and display how Carleton has been expanding and evolving throughout time.
Additional exploratory analyses may include how the economic recession, the economic status of the country, the real estate prices in Northfield, and the student population residing on campus may correlate to the college’s expansion. This would be done through GIS’s analysis tools.
Presentation: We are thinking about either presenting through an expository video or a presentation. We plan on presenting an animation of Carleton’s maps over time.
We have not found any digital humanity projects similar to this one. We have found papers discussing college’s relationship with their environment that surrounds them and animation of Africa’s map over time. We are sure that there must of some similar study out there, but we have yet to discover any dynamic studies that investigated a small scale (or urban environment) like this. Would love to hear any recommendations!
Some projects that we were looking at for inspiration:
http://www.brown.edu/Research/AAAH/index.htm
Timeline: Raw data (aerial images) collection date: Saturday, Feb 16th. Organize the ArcGIS data and preparation for time-series data: Friday, Feb 22nd. Video: Friday, March 9th
Amelia’s blog post
Alan’s blog post
Team Expansion, I really like the focus on town/gown negotiation in this proposed project, and think that angle will allow you tell a very compelling story. A few resources and suggestions below.