What is Historical GIS

This chapter will focus on the study of urban history, increasingly dependent on new communication and representation techniques, such as GIS, which makes it possible to represent change over space and time. This is a critical step forward in urban history, allowing for further developments in research. Scholars can compare historical maps and sequential phases of transformation and adaptation through relational databases of both spatial and non-spatial data, which can then be visualized in thematic maps. Every aspect of a city's buildings, roads, and rivers can therefore be rendered in 3D and localized with extreme precision. By adding chronological data to engage with the issue of change over time, historical GIS allows scholars to trace and visualize a city's development as a process stimulated by social and economic events, showing the dynamics of spatial objects that cannot be represented by other means.\