Assignment #3:Your Site Over Time

4.211/11.016 The Once and Future City Spring 2011

Assignments

• Find a site and describe its features and the puzzles they pose.

• Trace the site’s environmental history and identify the natural processes that continue to shape it.

• Trace the development of the site over time and identify the social processes that prompted and shaped the changes.

• Discover artifacts of the past and interpret their significance.

Social Processes as Agents of Change

March 6. Change Over Time: Discovering and Explaining Patterns

March 11. Workshop: Observing Change

March 13. Workshop: Analyzing Change

March 18. Workshop: Describing Change

March 20. Workshop: Discovering and Analyzing Patterns of Change

April 1. Explaining Change

April 3. Boston in Historical Context

April 8: Boston Sites: What Patterns Emerged

Your Site Over Time

• How did your site come to be the way it is today?

• How is it different today than in the past, and how is it similar?

• What were the major stages in its development? When did they occur and why?

• What were the most decisive events, decisions, or phenomena that shaped your site?

• How can you discover answers to these questions?

How to Proceed

• Find maps (especially detailed atlases, like Hopkins, Bromley, and Sanborn) that show your site at different periods from its initial development to the present. Gather more maps than you might need (more than the required four plus one from the present).

• On each map, identify patterns of streets, types of buildings and land uses, ownership, size of properties, and transportation.

• Compare maps of successive periods to identify changes and to determine which periods of the site’s development were most significant (during which period the initial settlement took place or when important changes happened).

• Explain the changes and how and why they were significant.

• Were the changes peculiar to your site or were they examples of local or national trends? Read Crabgrass Frontier for answers.

Looking at the Maps

• Let the maps be your visual guide to your site’s history. Avoid the temptation to find secondary sources on the history of your site. Stick to the maps and read Kenneth Jackson’s book, Crabgrass Frontier.

• Start with the earliest detailed map that you can find (Hopkins or Bromley may be the earliest 19th century maps).

• Is there a predominant land use on your site (e.g. residential, commercial, industrial, institutional) or are the uses mixed?

• Color the map with colored pencils, using standard colors for the various land uses.

• Are the different land uses unrelated or related, and, if so, how?• If there are residences, are they occupied by a single owner or are

they rental apartments? Do the names of owners suggest that they belong to a particular ethnic group?

• Are the sizes of properties similar or quite different?• Start reading Kenneth Jackson’s book, Crabgrass Frontier. It will

give you ideas as you make observations on the maps.

Use Standard Land Use Colors

There is an international standard for the use of color in mapping land use:– Residential: Yellow-Orange or Brown (yellow for single family

homes, orange or brown for flats or apartments.– Commercial: Red– Institutional: Blue– Industrial: Purple– Parks and Open Space: Green– Transportation: Grey

Color your maps, using these colors, to help in identifying and analyzing patterns of land use on your site.

Observing Changes Over Time

• Remember: Let the maps be your visual guide to your site’s history. Avoid the temptation to find secondary sources on the history of your site. Stick to the maps and read Kenneth Jackson’s book, Crabgrass Frontier.

• After observing the earliest detailed map of your site that you can find, proceed to the next map, chronologically, and repeat the process, asking the same questions.

• Have their been changes? If so, what are they? Trace streets and property lines to help decode how uses are changing.

• Look for changing building use: residential to commercial, for example, or from one type of commercial use to another.

• Look for continuity: few or no changes can also be significant. Does land use stay the same but demographics shift (look for changes in names).

• Has the predominant land use on your site (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional) changed?

• Look for how/when buildings appear, disappear, or are replaced.• Continue to read Crabgrass Frontier for ideas about how to make

sense of the changes you find.

Analyzing Changes Over Time

• What changes do you find?

• Did they happen gradually or suddenly?

• Are there patterns to the changes?

• Are different types of changes related?

• Consult Crabgrass Frontier for material to test, substantiate, or revise your hypotheses.

Explaining Changes Over Time

• What might explain the patterns of changes that you found?

• Were they the result of idiosyncratic decisions by individual property owners?

• Do they reflect broader forces, such as technological innovation in power, transportation, or communication?

• Do they reflect local, regional, or national policy and/or economic conditions?

• Do they reflect cultural changes, such as changes in fashion and ways of living?

• Consult Crabgrass Frontier for material to discover, test, substantiate, or revise your hypotheses.

• Formulate questions for the class session on Explaining Change.

Looking at Maps

4.211/11.016 The Once and Future City Spring 2010

Dudley Street 1890

Bromley

Fire Insurance Atlas

Begin to gather your maps right away!

http://libguides.mit.edu/maps