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Historical simulations with maps can be an effective way for the general public -- particularly younger generations -- to look into the past through other people’s eyes.
“Where Can You Buy a Home in the Hartford Region Over Time?” illustrates a basic prototype. It encourages spatial thinking about civil rights over time by randomly assigning an historically representative family profile (varying by race and finances) to each user, and guiding them to shop for a home in the city-suburban region at different points in time, with actual data for 1930 to the present.
Users start by entering their assigned family profile data into a home affordability calculator to determine their housing price range with mortgage figures for the time period. (This prototype links to a typical calculator from a personal finance website by CNN. We would develop our own calculator for the full simulation, and reveal more about how mortgage affordability was calculated at different points in time.)
Click to see a prototype of the interactive map, which displays sample real estate advertisements and costs (from archival newspapers and housing data). As users click on homes to explore their options, their assigned profile may lead them to encounter pop-up messages about racial steering, restrictive covenants, or seller/lender refusals (from documented reports in civil rights archives during the appropriate time period). In this sample, we inserted a quotation from a real estate agent to a prospective buyer as documented by a local civil rights organization in the housing discrimination evidence files it prepared for the 1974 U.S. v Barrows lawsuit against racial steering by seven Hartford-area real estate firms. This interactive simulation map prototype is based on a Flash XML map handler that we purchased for a nominal fee to evaluate this digital approach. We are looking into the potential of coding interactive simulation maps with Google Maps API, or VisualEyes, or OpenLayers, and will strive for an open-source solution.
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