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Development of a website featuring historical photographs and maps that explores the process of urban renewal in large and small cities across New York State.

We are applying for a Level I Digital Humanities Advancement grant for the amount of $49,587 to develop a design, technical plan, and prototype for the Picturing Urban Renewal website. This innovative website will place in space and time historic photographs of major redevelopment projects in four New York cities. It will encourage active looking as a way of learning about urban history and encourage users to compare how urban renewal transformed these four cities, for better and worse. This project makes two key contributions to urban and public history: (1) By focusing on the visual record, particularly pre-demolition and construction-era photographs, we foreground the human experience of redevelopment. 2) By comparing the impact of urban renewal on cities of varying sizes and economic fortunes, we fill an important gap in the scholarly literature, which emphasizes urban centers almost to the exclusion of the small and mid-sized towns and cities.