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How do cities grow?
Kathryn Holliday, Architecture
November 14, 2012


How do cities grow? Why do we build them the way we do? Who decides what buildings get built - where they are and what they look like? What does the architecture of our cities tell us about our own cultural histories? As an architecture historian, Kathryn Holliday asks and answers these kinds of questions. She is the author most recently of the book Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century (Rizzoli, 2012) and serves as the Director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture, an initiative of the School of Architecture for research and to promote public dialogue about architecture and urbanism in North Texas. This lecture is part of the GIS Day annual event, so Dr. Holliday will discuss a current project focused on the history of DFW as stored in cartographic maps and images. For the past three years, Dr. Holliday and her students in her course 'The Life of Cities: Modernism in Context' have taken scanned maps from the UT Arlington Library's Special Collections and georeferenced them using ArcGIS software. By overlaying these georeferenced maps atop each other, students and other researchers are able to begin to piece together the architectural and broader history of the region. Once georeferenced, Dr. Holliday's students compiled metadata and converted the maps into Google Earth format. During Fall 2012 UCLA's Hypercities Project, a leader in digital humanities resources, is beginning to spotlight these DFW maps.



NOTE: Recorded in whole or in part without restrictions or limitation for any educational or promotional purpose which The University of Texas at Arlington, and those acting pursuant to its authority, deem appropriate.