Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 15)
Living in Minneapolis, it is hard to ignore the massive highways like I-35W that cut the city into pieces. When I walk over the bridges, I always wonder: Why were these huge roads built right through the middle of our neighborhoods? The context is that decades ago, the city decided to plow these highways through busy, lived-in areas to make it easier for people to drive in and out of downtown. To do this, they tore down thousands of homes and split communities in half. Even now, you can be standing on a nice sidewalk and hear the constant roar of cars right below you. It feels like the city was built for traffic instead of for the people who actually live here.
You should care because these roads act like invisible walls. They decide which parts of the city are loud and polluted and which parts stay quiet. If we want Minneapolis to feel like a real community again, we have to look at how these old decisions still keep us separated today.
-Mapping Decline St. Louis and the American City – Timothy Rogers
This project is a deep dive into the St. Louis region, and how various discriminatory rules and regulations over the last 100 years have shaped where people live and move to in the STL area. This project takes on the ambitious task of compiling a ton of data, from Censuses, real estate agreements, zoning maps, contemporary datasets, and much more into one relatively digestible map. It does this all while providing the primary sources where it is pulling its information from. While it would’ve been fascinating to know how long it took too complete this project, it isn’t mentioned anywhere through the website.
This project was created by Professor Colin Gordon from the University of Iowa, to be a companion to his book of the same title. It aims to aid the reader in understanding some complex, and unfamiliar legislative terminology by physically showing how this legislation affected the people. To do this, it uses an interactive JavaScript- based map with lengthy descriptions. Allowing for the user to cycle through different points in time to see different data. While this project doesn’t explicitly draw any conclusions, it presents its information very bluntly allowing for the reader to draw their own conclusions. Professor Gordon lets the data speak for itself, we can see both the “cause” and the “effect” essentially through his use of maps and their descriptions. We can see how black and white people migrated through the region, and then we can read up on the regulations that could have motivated (or even restricted) certain movements in the area.
While being about St. Louis, I don’t believe this project is aimed solely to the people of the St. Louis area. It just provides St. Louis as one specific case study of discriminatory legislation. Professor Gordon references other locations that had similar legislations put into place, such as Baltimore, Louisville, and Greenville, South Carolina. This project all the same could have been done over any of those cities. However, I will say that having some general knowledge of areas in STL does help to make certain sections easier to read, as he references places like Forest Park, Kingshighway, and Washington Boulevard; without them being labeled.
I feel like this project did a very good job at displaying as much information as it does. It’s not easy to read through and decipher one piece of political legislation from 50 years ago, let alone the plethora that this project tackles. The biggest critique that I could place, is like that I mentioned earlier, that a few labels of significant areas of the map would make following along to many descriptions much easier. I’ve lived in the St. Louis area my whole life, but even I found myself struggling to keep up in a few places.
Overall, this is a very thoughtfully and meticulously put together project, that taught me a lot about the area I’ve grown up my whole life. We learn about discrimination in history class for much of our youth, and we do get to see a lot of examples in history. But having the example be my own home, at locations that I recognize, really adds a personal perspective to the issue that I haven’t quite experienced before.
The digital humanities project The History of Toxic Waste in St. Louis presents a chronological account of radioactive contamination across the St. Louis region, from its earliest slide, from 1942 during World War II to 2023 present time. Although the creator of the timeline is unknown, the project draws heavily on reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NPR, the EPA, and environmental advocacy organizations such as the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. The goal of the project is to document how nuclear weapons production during World War II led to decades of environmental contamination and to highlight the long-term impact on surrounding communities. By organizing these events chronologically, the timeline emphasizes how government decisions, corporate actions, and delayed remediation efforts contributed to ongoing health and environmental concerns.
The intended audience appears to be residents of the St. Louis region, students, and anyone interested in environmental justice. The project ultimately demonstrates that radioactive waste was repeatedly moved, buried, or inadequately contained, often with officials downplaying risks. From the contamination of Coldwater Creek to the closure of Jana Elementary School in 2022, the timeline suggests a pattern of insufficient oversight and delayed accountability. It also demonstrates how difficult the nuclear waste is to properly contain/get rid of.
Technologically, the project was created using TimelineJS, an open-source digital storytelling tool developed by the Northwestern University Knight Lab. TimelineJS allows creators to input dates, text, and media into a Google Sheet, which is then rendered into an interactive, scrollable timeline using embedded code. This method makes complex historical information accessible and visually engaging. I liked the use of TimelineJS for this project because it keeps it simple yet effective in displaying relevant imagery, dates, and information on each slide.
One major strength of the project is its clarity. Seeing events unfold chronologically makes the long-term consequences more powerful and easier to understand. A weakness, however, is that the slides are brief and sometimes repetitive, which can limit deeper analysis. I personally knew that this was happening in St. Louis because I researched it after seeing it on the news when there were underground fires from the nuclear waste. Overall, the project adds important nuance to our understanding of the St. Louis region. It reinforces how deeply World War II-era decisions still affect local communities today and highlights environmental issues that many residents may not fully realize are still ongoing.
-Saint Louis Patina-
St. Louis Patina is a blog-style digital project created by Chris Naffziger that focuses on documenting the architecture and history of St. Louis. One of the websites key features is an interactive “city map” that allowed me to explore different neighborhoods and their architectural characteristics. The goal of the project is to highlight the beauty and historical significance of local buildings and to help people understand how the city developed over time.The intended audience includes historians and also anyone interested in architecture or urban history. Because the site is easy to navigate and visually organized, it is accessible even to people who are not experts. The interactive map is especially effective because it presents information in a simple way, allowing me to explore the STL neighborhoods at my own pace. It also encourages engagement by allowing comments and discussion, which makes the project feel more interactive and community based.
One more strength of the project is how clearly it connects architecture to larger cultural influences. The author often relates St. Louis buildings to European architectural styles, which adds depth and context to the areas he talks about This helps users understand that local structures are part of a broader historical story. Additionally, the layout is clean and intuitive, making the site easy to use. However, there are also some weaknesses. Some parts of the map lack detailed descriptions, which can make it harder for users to fully understand certain locations. There are also technical issues, such as accessibility errors and overuse of tags, which can make navigation feel cluttered and overwhelming. These issues suggest that while the project is strong conceptually, it could benefit from further refinement.
The St. Louis Patina website enhances the understanding of the local region by combining visual tools with historical facts and blog posts. It provides new insights into familiar places while also adding nuance to what I already know about St. Louis, even though that may be much less than people who live nearer to the area.