The UCLA Spatial Blog

UCLA College of Letters and Science, Humanities Division

Primary contact

Todd Presner
Assistant Professor
Germanic Languages
(310) 794-6051
presner@ucla.edu

Project URL

www.berlin.ucla.edu

Additional project researchers

Yusuf Bhabhrawala, Center for Digital Humanities (UCLA)
Shawn Higgins, Center for Digital Humanities (UCLA)
Barbara Hui, Doctoral Candidate, Comparative Literature (UCLA)
Stanislav Parfenov, Academic Technology Services and Urban Planning (UCLA)
Shaun Westbrook, Design and Media Arts (UCLA)

Project description

What if you could know where the Berlin Wall once stood while walking in Berlin today?  What if you could visit a city at any point in time, create a social network through time and space, and seamlessly interface between the past and the physical world of today?  With content generated by architects, historians, urban sociologists, and archaeologists, as well as the general public, “HyperCities” are content rich, interactive digital spaces for exploring, learning about, and traveling to the great cities of the world.  Using the Google Maps API with an innovative interface and database that allows users to drill down, search, and network through time and space, HyperCities make the past come alive.  Berlin is the first in a series of HyperCities that will soon include New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles.  Users begin in the present using Google Maps satellite imagery and navigate their way through time by unveiling layers of geo-referenced historical maps, annotating family genealogies, searching by a single city block over centuries of time, and finally interfacing with the physical world with locative technologies.

Funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, in collaboration with the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities, UCLA Academic Technology Services, the UCLA Office of Instructional Development, the UCLA Academic Senate, and the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.

Project video