This system is built and administered as a sub project of the Middle Eastern Urban Societies joint research project. Targeting the four cities of Beirut, Aleppo, Tehran and Istanbul, it uses Google Maps as a base to allow users to superimpose old maps from a wide range of eras, or juxtapose maps from different periods. Furthermore, while enabling researchers connected with the project to input and share a range of research data, we aim to make this resource available to the public as a new and unprecedented archive of materials.
For input data, we intend to allow users to freely set basic spatial information on maps such as points, lines and polygons, and enable them to upload related texts, images and audio materials.
Between the early modern times to the present day, many of the world’s major cities, including those of the Middle East, have become megalopolises and have enlarged urban spaces to gigantic proportions. At the same time, a range of factors including the verticalization of structures due to changes in the energy environment, redevelopment, war and disasters have brought on dramatic changes in the spatial structures themselves.
This change raises a need to pinpoint historical events and people’s memories not only within the spaces we see before us today, but also in spaces that have existed in the past. The basemap system allows historical and cultural information held by people from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds who have gathered and lived in the Middle Eastern cities, and new knowledge and information obtained by researchers of the present day, to be pinpointed on the system’s multi-layered surfaces. Furthermore, researchers can freely connect and compare the accumulated information, and is hoped that this would give rise to new understandings and form a foundation for expanding the potentialities of research.
Needless to say, many cities in the Middle East have the longest histories in the world. In the future, this multi-layered base map system will allow us to delve even deeper into their earlier history. There may also be potential in developing similar projects not only for other cities in the Middle East, but also for many of those in Asia and Africa.
Given that the parent project Middle Eastern Urban Societies is an international joint research project, this basemap system is in English, and the right to input information will be limited to members of joint research teams working on the abovementioned project and other collaborating researchers.
Click here to find out more about superimposing Google Maps with old maps.
(KUROKI Hidemitsu)
