How to tell the truth in digital town plans: Paper and Virtual Cities. Annotating and Visualising Historical Contexts

Abstract

Monmonnier and MacEachren tackled the problem of distortions of truth in map projections and the visualisation of statistical data and its ethical impact. They focused foremost on space rather than time and history. We try to develop methods that integrate and visualise historical interpretations and contexts in digital town plans and virtual reconstructions of cities that allow users to chose the right tools in their research, planning or design of towns, to recognise (technical, historical and contextual) manipulations in historical and virtual maps and to expose ethical aspects related to editing of information. The ultimate goal is to make choices in the process of digitisation. This paper is embedded in the research programme Paper and Virtual Cities. New methodologies for the use of historical sources in virtual urban cartography, financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) which will be presented briefly.