The Urban Mapper

Assassin’s Creed is doing amazing things with historical 3D visualization.  Obviously they are taking liberties with details – was there a tree right there? What did the sign hanging off this building look like? Who knows.

But there is a lot of data out there, including street layouts, trace evidence of plot and building size, and potentially deeds and tax rolls that would tell us, say, if a cheesemonger was at a particular place or not.  Most interesting to me, however, is whether they got all the streets right, or if they got the main monuments, after which they used artistic license or a script to generate the rest.

Academically, getting those streets and the outdoor rooms they create right is my main interest.

I’m trying to get into the flow of being a potential academic, an urban historical geographer or an architectural historian. My current project is 3D visualization of a historic city. My first attempt will be the North End of Boston in 1775, (based on the map at right (large).

Process

The process I’m playing with now is to trace the buildings, streets, plots and waterlines in illustrator, which I will then export to Sketchup.  Some of the buildings we know, such as the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church.  These I can inset into Sketchup from the Google 3D Warehouse.  I can then enter various Saltbox houses, wharfs, etc. for the rest of town.  This won’t be exact, but it will I hope give a sense of the city.

Ultimately, I am thinking that I want to put this into a game engine, so that people could experience running around the city.  I have Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and will probably get the sequel, Skyrim when it comes out next month.  Obviously, these are  not programs everyone has, however, so I can’t distribute as widely as I might like.

Questions for y’all:

Do people know good open source game engines?  Especially ones that you can import from SketchUp?

Are there any topographical maps of early Boston? ow high were the various hills originally?

Didn’t know the guy at all, but was affected by him – he created Depthmap, the space syntax program I used a bunch, and was active in the message boards and listserv that got me through my master’s project. An obscure connection, but I am still saddened to hear this.

While I found street vending to be very stressful in India, I know many people quite enjoy exploring markets and street food in developing countries. At the same time, many of these street vendors are small businesses that I believe ought to be fostered. These vendors are often cleared away as part of development projects that are aimed at attracting tourists, however ironic that may be. MIT’s Sidewalk Laboratory (SLAB) made this tourist route map that brings tourists to street vending.

This seems a wonderful synergy, except that my cynicism tells me that the people who have the real and social capital to make such cool maps are not street vendors, but rather those who would wish to clear them out of a potential development opportunity.

So far, I’ve found sources saying that just over half of the funds have been leaked.  Of this, 11% is in New England, and none are multi-modal path focused.  The latter still gives hope that we might get the word that Somerville has won funding for The Community Path Extension.  I will be updating this as I find more information.  For those interested in the planning grants, it looks like only 10.8m has been announced so far, so 69% are still to come.

– update: only 37% left, 64% of (max) planning grants left, only 11% to NE yet –

(Chart of the leaks I have discovered so far after the break.)

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