In school, lessons about the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War tend to focus on the struggles of individuals — of Lincoln or soldiers or those enslaved.

The University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab imagined that there might be a better, more thorough way to tell the emancipation story if you could see it — on a map.

The lab, led by Richmond president and historian of the American South Edward L. Ayers and the lab’s associate director Scott Nesbit, teamed up with Callowhill-based GIS development firm Azavea to build “Visualizing Emancipation” an interactive map that documents 3,000 events — from news reports to fugitive slave notices — that contributed to the end of the practice of slavery in the United States.

Visit the tool here.

The map allows researchers, teachers and students alike to focus in on various aspects of the Civil War and how it tracked with the progress of emancipation, or zoom out to get a sense of the huge swath of the country affected by the conflict.

Using a high performance geoprocessing GeoTrellis framework, Azavea helped build a variety of features, like the heat map which demonstrates the density of events in particular area or an animation which shows the progress of events across location and time. The application also makes use of both open source and commercial software, including OpenLayers, GeoServer, PostGIS and an ArcGIS Online base map, according to the press release.

Events were sources from newspapers, letters and diaries from Cornell University’s Making of America digital collection, Tufts University’s Perseus Project digital library, the University of Virginia’s Valley of the Shadow online archive, and University of Richmond’s Richmond Daily Dispatch digitized newspaper archive.

“The trick is finding and making events visible, while acknowledging the complexity of when, where and how slavery fell apart in the U.S.  The site aims to make exploring emancipation more straightforward and understandable,” Nesbit said in the release.

The project was funded through an Office of Digital Humanities startup grant of $48,155 as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People initiative. The University of Richmond then matched the grant, offering approximately $98,500 in cash and in-kind support, according to the press release.

Going forward, the university hopes to incorporate the “Visualizing Emancipation” map into larger digital Atlas of American History. In the meantime, it’s easy to see how a tool like this could change the way students learn and think about the Civil War.

In a partnership with the Inquirer, development news site PlanPhilly and reporter Patrick Kerkstra land an important look at tax delinquent properties in Philadelphia, finding that some 1110,000 or roughly one if five have back taxes associated.

The package includes a dizzying online map detailing the locations. Find the map here, made by Inquirer staff, and the entire package here.

Fox29 reporter Jeff Cole used the package to find that Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers owed roughly $1,500.00 on two properties he owned, a sum that was promptly paid.

From Trulia, a neat infographic based on the company’s own metric comparing rent and bought properties. Play with the interactive map here.

The map shows Philadelphia to be the most affordable place to buy a home among the country’s five largest cities, though Phoenix, San Antonio and Dallas were ranked as cheaper to buy among other big cities. [That big red circle shows that New York City is 'very much more affordable to rent,' when compared with buying.]

The Weekend Map, a tool meant to aggregate ‘almost everything that’s happening’ in a city on an interactive map, now has a Philadelphia version.

Launched three months ago by two Brooklyn web designers, the project already has versions in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, says Casey Falvey.

Falvey and co-founder Reki Hattori both moved on from nonprofit web design to focus on the Weekend Map, which has focused on those six cities based on factors including demographics, population density and “perhaps most importantly, the availability of data,” said Falvey.

“Currently we are sourcing the data available from third party APIs, such as Eventbrite, Meetup and Songcast. However we are quickly building out the infrastructure needed to allow users to submit their own events, and have the site be geared primarily towards discovering hyperlocal user submitted community-based events,” Falvey said. “Since we do expect it be some time before there is nearly enough data to fill the map with only user submitted events, we will slowly transition from primarily third party data to a mix [in one to three months] and then finally to just user-generated data [in three to six months].

The pair is funding their work through freelance web development work and limited ad revenue.

Added Falvey: “We still hope the current iteration of the site is novel and valuable to the cities we’re in because it brings together a diverse mix of events from around the web in a really visually appealing and user focused and friendly way.”

With this nifty map from MIT researchers, using anonymous AT&T data, a user can trace where most outgoing calls from mobile phone in a given county go.

In Philadelphia’s case, depicted above, or available by searching for it on the site, it’s very regional, with New England, Florida and Southern California showing up.

Also check out this regionally based map using cell phone data, showing a big divide between Philly and Pittsburgh.

H/T tweeted:

This 1838 map of Philadelphia from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania didn't make our list of the 10 best maps of Philadelphia.

We love maps.

For hundreds of years, they have helped us better understand our world. That understanding has grown wildly with time and technology, but, still, maps help.

In a place as inwardly focused, we have plenty of maps in Philadelphia. You also may know that we have something of a technology community here.

So there are resources like the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access, or PASDA, which offers just a wild glut of GIS shape files for mapping geeks. We’ve seen cool mapping tools that are of broader scope though Philly got some love: from the addition of bicycle directions to Philadelphia Google Maps to the Google Building Maker to mapping the homes of those in the U.S. armed services who died in the Mideast this decade and many more.

But we wanted to highlight the coolest maps made for Philadelphia of Philadelphia.

Taking into account our own map obsessions, suggestions and tweeted:

MAPPING ABANDONMENT

Today, city development news site PlanPhilly released this Flash-map tracking the estimated 40,000 abandoned properties in Philadelphia.

It’s part of a major research project funded in part, like PlanPhilly itself, by the William Penn Foundation, that features heavy reporting from former Inquirer City Hall reporter Patrick Kerkstra. Yesterday’s feature includes an even more detailed, though more geographically targeted data-tracking map, seen here.

[Full Disclosure: TP co-founder Brian James Kirk is the Plan Philly web editor and was involved in the mapping development of this project.]

Find it here.

COMMONSPACE

In August, Technically Philly told you about CommonSpace, the web application designed to help uncover new businesses within walking distance of a location, and the excitement hasn’t worn off.

CommonSpace bumps off another similar project from Callowhill-based GIS software company Azavea: the cool, walkability map tool largely built by developer Aaron Ogle called Walkshed, which we’ve also covered.

Find it here.

PHILAPLACE

The dynamic and interactive oral history platform PhilaPlace from has recently unveiled new features and continues to seek more stories.

Find it here.

PHILLY HISTORY

The online home of two million archived photos from an array of city agencies and organizations is one of our greatest assets.

Its mapping feature could use a tune up, but it still offers a location-based search of photos that extend more than a century in age.

Find it here.

PHILADELPHIA SAFETY MAP

An entirely subjective map started by PhillySpeaks user dorydorado, this Google Maps overlay suggests what neighborhoods are safe, what are OK in the day and what should be avoided. …Let the condemnation and controversy continue.

Find it here.

H/T PhiladelphiaSpeaks

REDLINING IN PHILADELPHIA

The previous map brought about conversations on whether labeling some neighborhoods as ones that should be avoided was its own form of ‘redlining,’ the early 20th century practice of banks, insurance companies and other institutions mitigating perceived risk by increasing costs or avoiding service altogether in poorer neighborhoods with greater risk of crime.

Why not check out one of those very redlining maps, like this one from 1936 that is a clear enough example that it’s the image on the very Wikipedia page of redlining.

See it here.

1847 PHILADELPHIA

So, we’re not sure if this is, like, well known, but Philadelphia has something of a reputation for its American history.

It figures, then, that historians, academics, cartographers and hobbyists have more historical maps than we can keep track of. Scour the databases and websites of the Library of Congress, Temple (like MPIP) or Penn, historical societies and the like, and you will find plenty.

It’s hard to choose one to represent this world of maps, but here’s one, a beautifully preserved 1847 map of Philadelphia and its 10 mile environs — which includes most of today’s city because the map predates the 1854 county and city consolidation. Scan and zoom, scan and zoom.

You can find it here, as part of the David Rumsey Map Collection, where reproductions are sold.

PHILADELPHIA GEOHISTORY MAP OVERLAY

As suggested in the previous section, there are too many cool historical maps to see them all, so sometimes it’s best to get a bunch together and see how they compare.

Like how the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network allows you to see more than a dozen maps in action.

Play with it here.

Also check out their specific maps, like this 1930 aerial survey of the city. The Free Library also has a very cool online map overlay collection of its own.

NBASE NEIGHBORHOOD MAP

The Cartographic Modeling Lab at Penn Design has a ton of interesting maps, none of which might be as controversial as one project breaking down the neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

Just like you won’t, Technically Philly can’t say we agree with all of the distinctions but, then, would it be fun if we did?

Find it here.

MAPPING DUBOIS

At the end of the 19th century, legendary historian and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois famously led a research project on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania to create a deep census of the 7th ward, then one of the densest collections of black Philadelphians of varying education and social levels.

More than 100 years later, Mapping DuBois was launched, bringing his research and 1900 U.S. census data to the friendly confines of web maps.

Find it here.

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This is a semi-regular department we may or may not call Top Ten Tuesdays. There’s no judging in brainstorming. See others here.

Update: April 1, 12:39 p.m.: Historical Sociey of Pennsylvania spokesperson Lauri Cielo clarified with us that though a lack of funding may affect the possibility of new features and expansion to other neighborhoods, the Web site will remain available to users and staff is budgeted to keep the project going with story uploads and maintenance. Project Director Joan Saverino makes note of these clarifications in her comment below.

Funding is running dry for an online historical project that is a powerful example of the intersection between forward-thinking technologists and history-minded academics.

Organizers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania‘s three-year, $500,000 PhilaPlace project, an interactive documentation of “beyond the bell” 19th century ethnic and immigrant working-class history, are seeking new grants and innovative ways to keep the project sustainable.

The news comes as impressive new features were unveiled last week, coordinators tell Technically Philly.

Adjacent to PhilaPlace’s historic Google Map overlays that show the city’s dense development at the turn of the century, the site now features a “Streets” section that details ethnicity, land use, occupation and population, showing rapid change over time in several prominent Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Based on census and land-use data, users can see, for example, the rapidly changing ethnic diversity of 9th Street, commonly referred to now as the Italian Market, between 1880 and 1920. Or, they might have a look at Wallace Street in Northern Liberties—once known as Paschall’s Alley—where there was a concentration of free blacks before the Civil War. The new section also shares with users the intricate communities displaced by the building of I-95 along the Delaware riverfront.

Working on the project with University of Pennsylvania‘s Department of City and Regional Planning graduate students, the features were unveiled on Friday. But a lack of funding could mean the end of the continued exploration and innovative online sharing of this kind of research.

“If we’re able to secure more funding we’ll be able to do some more of this work. We’re hoping to expand into other neighborhoods,” Project Coordinator Joan Saverino said in a telephone interview. Currently, the project focuses on Northern Liberties and South Philadelphia, conditions of the initial project grants.

Saverino says that since launching in December, the site has has far exceeded expectations. The site has been visited 17,000 times, on track to beat traffic goals by more than two months. And, according to internal metrics, users are spending an average of four minutes on the site.

The Historical Society is working on forming strategic partnerships to sustain and continue research. It is already deepening partnerships with universities and other neighborhood and grassroots organizations to do just that, Saverino says.

And as PhilaPlace coordinators made clear from day one—they’re still looking for historical stories from users. “We’d love to see more people contribute stories,” Saverino says.

BusMinder, a bid from Azavea for a contest from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

The story of a government looking for technology to do what it does better is becoming increasingly average.

And Callowhill-based GIS software firm Azavea, which recently changed its name from Avencia, has made it something of a habit of getting involved whether those discussions are happening in Philadelphia or not.

More than a month after chasing New York City’s BigApps contest, an Azavea developer has his eyes set on winning a challenge from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

The MassDOT Developers Real Time Challenge — whose landing page seemed to be down all weekend — calls on developers to create applications that utilize the MBTA Real-Time XML Trial Feed — which includes data for specific bus routes — and make it more accessible through the internet, mobile devices, land-line phones, text messages, software applications and any other widely accessible software platform, according to a release from the company.

So, Azavea developer David Zwarg has created BusMinder, which lets users create bus reminder alerts — or ’busminders’ one might say — to receive SMS or e-mail alerts for the estimated arrival times of bus stops. Read more from Zwarg on developing the tool here. Zwargs’s simple application is not dissimilar from Walkshed, the neighborhood walkability score tool from his colleague Aaron Ogle, which was submitted to the BigApps contest.

Both tools, the release says, “promote a more sustainable economy and environment, ultimately making our communities healthier, and more socially and economically responsible.”

Now if only they had a contest to enter in Philadelphia.

Fresh off a name change, GIS software firm Azavea, formerly Avencia, has launched a free subscription plan for Cicero, its much-touted legislative district and elected official search API.

The plan offers users 1,000 monthly credits toward “any coordinate-based legislative district matching, elected official data lookups and/or map web service requests,” according to a release [PDF].

The company release leans heavily on suggesting the ‘Cicero Free‘ plan is for more limited organizations that want to add legislative data to their Web sites or online applications. The recently released Our Philadelphia platform, which was built by Common Cause Pennsylvania to track money in local politics, used a beta version of the free plan.

Play with it the free API here.

Google Maps new biking directions feature shows safe-to-ride bike paths in green. It's not the path we'd take to Citizen's Bank Park, but hey, Google does no evil, right?

You could say we’ve been welcoming of spring and the onset of the 2010 Grapefruit League. A bike ride down to Citizen’s Bank Park in a few weeks? Count us in. But how best to get there?

Google has launched a beta and buggy version of its new bike-friendly Maps features, including directions that utilize Philly bike paths and landmarks of local biking facilities, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported this morning.

The route Google provided in a directional search from Fishtown to CBP, though it’s not quite the route we’d opt to take, may be one we ought to try. The directions provide fairly accurate time estimations based on an 8-10 mile-per-hour jaunt.

As the coalition points out, it’s difficult to map the intricacies of biking a city like Philadelphia�that awfully bumpy ride North on Third street above Chinatown might appeal to riders looking to avoid traffic, or the busy but easy-cruising Columbus Boulevard might attract those who appreciate a bike path with their high-speed vehicles. But Google is tracking faulty recommendations down to individual street intersections.

We’re looking forward to those bike-suitable paths through New Jersey, which are all-but-absent from Google’s maps, yet. Like baseball, we couldn’t be more excited about the Shore, either.