Abstract

Cities in Time: The Historical Urban Ecological (HUE) Data Set
Track: Census and Statistical Data
Authors: Eric Hanss

The Center for Population Economics has completed and released a historical GIS (HGIS) of street centerlines and ward boundaries along with 9,425 variables detailing the conditions of urban life in historic Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, and Philadelphia. Covering the period of rapid urbanization from 1830 to 1930, this new resource allows researchers to visualize the historical urban environment and perform advanced geospatial and statistical analysis, filling a major gap in historical urban GIS. The data are available through our web mapping and extraction service, which allows users to create over 89,000 unique chloropleth maps and download individualized data sets. This presentation will discuss the creation of the HUE GIS, innovations to current HGIS methodologies, and preliminary research applications including the growth of sanitation systems and transportation networks, the distribution of death, crime, and disease, changing socioeconomic patterns, and more.