The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape was written by James Howard Kunstler’s and first published in 1993. Though tracing the development of place in the United States, Kunstler argues that America’s built-landscapes, both urban and rural, have declined for numerous reasons, central among them the advent of the affordable automobile and the political, economic, and cultural forces that resulted. Although the book is nearly twenty years old, the issues Kunstler discusses regarding the places we live continue to be problems in the United States and Canada. Sprawling cities, declining local economies, developments that ignore human scale, and architecture that ignores traditional relationships people should have with their surroundings are still resulting in the dislocation of people and communities.

Since the 1980s a school of design has emerged called New Urbanism, which promotes a high standard of living through thoughtful, common sense design practices. Many of the tenets of this people-centred design paradigm can be fulfilled through the conservation of heritage resources. Conserving buildings and landscapes keeps our communities unique and builds sense of place, fostering local identity and pride. Retaining open spaces like parks and town squares ensures a continued public realm that helps maintain community ties, an important consideration in an age when commercial and suburban building practices marginalize public space in return for creating more profitable private space. Furthermore, many historic buildings were constructed for mixed commercial and residential use on a human scale, creating integrated communities, walkable streets and meaningful interaction between people and buildings.

I would strongly recommend The Geography of Nowhere to anyone interested in the evolution of North American human ecology.

How Fire has Shaped Alberta’s Main Streets

Amid leaping flames and clouds of smoke, Fort Saskatchewan lost its landmark Fort Hotel on the evening of January 18th, 2010. Situated in the city’s old commercial core, the hotel had provided lodging since 1914, and was a well-known watering hole in the small city north of Edmonton. Though tragic, fires have historically been a common occurrence in Alberta’s communities and were an influential factor in shaping the province’s Main Streets since the early 20th century.

In the early 1900s fledgling communities in Alberta were composed mostly of homes and businesses built using inexpensive wood frame construction. In commercial areas such as Main Streets, buildings were huddled together with shared walls, sometimes separated by alleyways cluttered with storage sheds, outhouses and debris. Local business owners and residents feared the hugely destructive fires these conditions regularly caused.

Communities took precautionary measures to guard against the possibility of fire by establishing fire regulation zones around Main Streets, controlling the use and storage of flammable materials, and requiring permits to burn trash. Builders were encouraged to include fire walls between buildings and to use non-flammable materials such as brick, stone, and later concrete block. Buildings constructed of these fire resistant materials provided higher rents to owners and spurred growth by giving communities an air of permanence, thus attracting more residents, commerce and industry. With the advent of municipal governments, local taxes could be raised to establish volunteer fire departments and municipal water systems, the legacies of which continue to serve their local communities today. Some residents opposed these precautions because they led to increased taxes, and because the fire-resistant buildings were more expensive to build. However, most people supported the measures because they limited the destructiveness of fires and lowered the cost of fire insurance.

Despite all of these measures, devastating fires still occurred regularly. This element’s destructive legacy has left its mark on almost every city, town, and village in Alberta. Particularly devastating fires occurred in Athabasca in 1913, claiming multiple buildings. Around that same time in Rockyford the south half of Main Street was reduced to ash. Almost an entire block was lost Olds in 1923, and a 1932 blaze in Peace River saw one third of downtown reduced to rubble.

Disastrous fires such as these enabled the construction of clusters of new buildings that helped to redefine their communities. Streetscapes of brick, stone and concrete block are common sights in Alberta’s towns and villages today, and few of the original wooden commercial buildings remain. Alberta’s scenic Main Streets are tangible representations of the community’s evolution. The recent fire that claimed the Fort Hotel, while regrettable, is a continuation of process.

CHIN Digital Heritage Symposium 2010

On February 4th and 5th, the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) held a Digital Heritage Symposium at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Through the generosity of the Public History Program at UWO I was able to participate online. It was my first online academic event, and I was pleased with how it turned out. I had originally thought that not being there in person would limit my interaction and ability to network; however this was not the case. Symposium organizers included a box through which online participants could submit questions, and by Tweeting my way through the proceedings using the appropriate hash marks (#dhs2010) I was linked to other online participants, and had some meaningful interaction with not only other participants, but with some presenters as well.

Of the nearly 25 speakers those two days, the following talks stood out for me.

Agnès Alfandari, Head of the Multimedia Department at the Louvre, discussed some of the Louvre’s partnership with the DNP Lab in Tokyo. The exhibits the partnership is producing are extraordinary.

Chris Mathieson, head of the small Vancouver Police Museum gave a great talk on social media in museums, a fitting topic since he has built the second largest Twitter following for a Canadian museum. During his presentation Chris mentioned that social media is the great equalizer between large and small museums (evidenced by the fact that Agnès Alfandari of the Louvre asked his advice on social media) as well as between museums and their communities.

The very engaging George Siemens, currently with Athabasca University, summarized the first day’s proceedings in a talk that included the future of digital technologies in museums, particularly social media and visualization.

Graham Larkin of the National Gallery of Canada spoke about their Provenance Research Project relating to their Nazi gap list (works that might have been stolen during the Second World War). This project is now complete, and Larkin would like to see a similar project done throughout Canada with the support of CHIN.

Stephen Fai of Carleton University spoke of the Cultural Diversity and Material Imagination in Saskatchewan Architecture project, which deals with the digital conservation and presentation of ethno-cultural building practices on the prairies.

The Reciprocal Research Network, discussed by Museum of Anthropology’s Susan Rowley was an excellent example of the potential for collective intelligence in academic research.

Artist in new media (read “digital”) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was also present. He spoke about the challenges museums face in relation to new media/digital art, but also discussed a number of his works, which I found fascinating, particularly as I am currently enrolled in an interactive exhibit design class. Two projects which I found most interesting were his works Pulse Room and Under Scan.

Dance Dance Education

I feel like I have been pretty quiet about the whole Exhibit Design project I began writing about in early January, so I figured I would give an update. The title of this entry relates to my first class in Exhibit Design, where Bill Turkel asked us to think about some history appliances that we might construct to help people engage with history in their everyday life. The premise of a history appliance is an interesting one, which I recommend you read more about in the blogs Digital History Hacks and Old is the New New.

Anyways, the idea that Dana Johnson and I came up with is the Dance Dance Education machine (brought to you by the good folks at Dance Dance Revolution). The basic idea is a LCD dance floor that teaches users different dances. The floor would be paired with a wall-mounted LCD screen to show both instruction and demonstrations of the dances. Cameras in the room could capture the user's movements for playback, and could possibly even provide feedback on how to improve. The experience would of course be set to authentic music. What Dana and I really liked about this idea was that it would help conserve dance as intangible cultural heritage by maintaining the ability for people to learn the movements regardless of if a living being is available to teach them.

One of the things I really enjoy about the Interactive Exhibit Design class has been creating ideas like the one above; ways in which people can learn history in engaging, non-traditional ways. Some of my ideas have, for one reason or another, been unfeasible, but I think that some show real promise. These later ones I have posted on my Exhibit Design Website, and I welcome you to take a look. As always, feedback is encouraged.

Google SketchUp and Public History

Google SketchUp is a free 3D modeling software that allows the user to model physical objects on their computer. SketchUp works in conjunction with Google Earth through the 3D Buildings layer, and adds a further dimension for fans of Google Earth to explore. SketchUp is fun and relatively easy to use once you get hang of it.

3D modelling of built landscapes seems to be in the early stages of catching on, based on the number that currently appear in Google Earth (Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto are examples of Canadian cities with a good number of 3D building, whereas Montreal and Halifax seemed to have relatively few). In his 2003 article “Following in Rabelais’ Footsteps: Immersive History and the 3D Virtual Buildings Project”, John Bonnett explains that constructing 3D buildings is a promising way in which to engage the public with history. Today this is occurring in a number of ways, including through Google Earth Tours, which include worldwide virtual tours of cathedrals, castles and palaces, universities, rail stations, and buildings included on the United States' National Registry of Historic Places. Some 3D representations of heritage resources include information relating to the history of their construction and associated people and events. However, some of these suffer from the same issues of authority that plague Wikipedia, where writers include a pseudonym and do not have to include sources. Unlike Wikipedia however, if one were to find inaccurate information it is not a simple matter to correct the entry.

A surprising number of buildings in Alberta have been rendered in 3D by various contributors. Notably among them is a user named newfangled who has provided over 200, many in the Edmonton area. If historic buildings included a simple link to an authoritative site regarding the building’s history, the issue of authority might be addressed. Canadian sites that should be considered include HistoricPlaces.ca (which includes site-specific information on nationally designated resources) or HeRMIS (which includes site-specific information on provincial designated resources in Alberta). An interesting public history project might be to focus on creating 3D models of buildings in areas with high concentrations of historic buildings, such as Calgary`s Stephen Avenue, or Edmonton`s Old Strathcona, and link the models to municipal Statements of Significance, which serve to explain the historical value of a resource.

To see my early ventures into the world of SketchUp, please see my Interactive Exhibit Design website.

Interactive Exhibit Design and New Website

The New Year has come and gone, and I am back at UWO working towards an MA in Public History. This semester I am continuing to explore the digital world in relation to public history through a course in interactive exhibit design, taught by Bill Turkel. Unlike a tradition graduate course in history, this class has no formal written component. Rather, it will be a series of projects that I design, program and fabricate, the process of which will be documented through a dedicated website I have created. Feel free to check the website often and see my progress, and I hope to provide brief updates using this blog and Twitter. As always, I encourage whatever comments and advice readers might have.

Reflections on Digital History

I began this blog in September of 2009 as a requirement in my Digital History course, which I am taking as part of my MA in Public History. As a final exercise, my professor, Bill Turkel has asked each of us in the class to write a post looking back at our experiences in the class, what we have learned, how we view things differently, and what we have discovered about ourselves as future historians.

What I have learned is an easy, though lengthy answer, as it reads basically like the course syllabus. I have learned the power of the digital world and its potential use for historians, something already being explored by a number of academics and organizations. I have learned skills like HTML, CSS, blogging, tweeting, website design, data mining, visualization techniques, and how to create mashups and georeference with services like Google Maps. Furthermore, it has been impressed upon me that the internet is by no means a perfect medium, and that its democratizing aspect is both a great strength and a great weakness. Amateur history sites and reference sites like Wikipedia compete with academic history sites for peoples’ time and attention. I have learned that the best way in which to improve the internet as a source of good history is through engaging with it, be it through starting one’s own site, collaborating with others on theirs, or even just creating or editing Wikipedia entries.

Over the past few months, as I waded into this largely new world, I began to view things differently. The implications of copyright (and copyleft) have wide implications on my future work in public history, and while by no means an expert, I now have enough knowledge to comfortably navigate those potentially treacherous waters. I have also gained an appreciation of free and open source software such as CutePDF, and the graphic design programs GIMP and InkScape. I am also now more likely to notice the computers that subtly permeate our lives, and I try to think of ways in which these new (or new to me) technologies could be used in history or heritage.

Most importantly this course has helped to shape what kind of an historian I want to be. Prior to starting this program, my experiences had been in heritage, rather than history, and I believe this has come across in my blog posts. (A few weeks ago I ran my blog through the Blog Discourse Analyzer available through the Text Analysis Developers Alliance webpage and discovered that I had used the term ‘Heritage’ 36 times, where as the term ‘History’ only appeared 16 times.) I am passionate about local history and built heritage, and by taking this course I now have a better idea as to how I might better engage with the public and make history as relevant as possible through things like online publishing, interactive websites and collaborative online projects, as well as trough emerging technologies like augmented reality.

When I began this course, I was competent with both computers and the internet, but I never imagined the possibilities that have been presented to me over the past few months. I am looking forward to a second course with Bill, Interactive Exhibit Design, where I can continue engaging with digital technologies in a heritage-related context. This post by no means marks the end of this blog, and I plan to continue updating it as often as possible.