Presentation given at the Geospatial in the Cultural Heritage Domain - Past, Present & Future event in London on 7th March 2012. The event was organised as part of the JISC GECO project.

1. Classifying historical business directory data:
Issues of translation between geographical and ethnographic contributions to
a community PPGIS project.
Ashley Dhanani & David Jeevendrampillai
Adaptable Suburbs Project
www.ucl.ac.uk/adaptablesuburbs
@AdaptableSuburb

2. Why are suburbs important?
What understanding do we have of the role of suburbs?
What is going on in Policy/Politics?
Adaptability?

3. Structure of the talk
Material Culture Heritage
- Structure of the built environment
Historic Business Directories
- Use of the built environment
PPGIS: Community Maps
- Meanings of the built environment

4. Material Culture Heritage
Understanding the urban built form through time
Using network analysis we can gain insight into:
– Movement
– Co-presence in space
– Implications of the changes in structure of space through time

5. c.1875

6. c.1875

7. c.1915

8. c.1965

9. 2011

10. Changing Built Form
c.1915
c.1875

11. Making Historic Maps Usable

12. We need vectors…

14. Business Directory Information –
Socio-economic use of the built environment

15. Categorisation

16. The Problem of Categorisation…
Q – What is a Post Office?
Financial Service?
Depot?
Retail?
Community Service?

17. Community Maps and Ethnography

18. Conclusions
- Changing the material forms of data
- Informative gaps
- Directs dialogue between disciplines

19. Adaptable Suburbs Project
www.ucl.ac.uk/adaptablesuburbs
@AdaptableSuburb
Victor Buchli
Ruthie Carlisle
Ashley Dhanani
Claire Ellul
Sam Griffiths
Muki Haklay
David Jeevendrampillai
Laura Vaughan