This study has been going on for a few years now. The tech­no­logy used has evolved rap­idly dur­ing this time and con­tin­ues to do so. Ori­gin­ally, Abobe Illus­trator was the primary ren­der­ing tool. More recently the abil­ity to use SketchUp in con­junc­tion with Arc­GIS has allowed more rap­idly mod­el­ling and the abil­ity main­tain a live link between the data and the representation.

Back­ground
The inten­tion of this study is to invest­ig­ate ways in which demo­graphic data can be rep­res­en­ted spa­tially. A data­base has been cre­ated using manu­script census data, tax rolls, court records, and pro­bate records. These have been manu­ally matched across the spec­trum from 1851–1911. This data­base has been com­bined with maps of Guelph cre­ated in Arc­GIS. Tak­ing advant­age of the Arc­GIS exten­sion for SketchUp, these records are then shared with that pro­gram and presen­ted.
This pro­cess allows an invest­ig­ator to vir­tu­ally walk down nine­teenth cen­tury streets in Guelph, peer in win­dows and knock on doors to dis­cover what is going on inside and who inhab­its a par­tic­u­lar place of busi­ness over this period.

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