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Colouring Cities: A Citizen Science Platform for Knowledge Production on the Building Stock - Potentials for Urban and Architectural History

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Research and Education in Urban History in the Age of Digital Libraries (UHDL 2023)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1853))

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Abstract

Colouring Cities is an open digital platform that enables the collaborative collection and visualization of building data. The platform provides a unique opportunity to collect spatial information on the characteristics, performance, and evolution of building stocks, thereby bridging existing data gaps and supporting sustainable urban development. By harnessing the power of crowdsourcing, Colouring Cities allows researchers, architects, and urban planners to gather spatial information in a more efficient and cost-effective manner than traditional methods. The user-friendly interface and comprehensive data management capabilities make Colouring Cities a valuable citizen science platform, empowering everyone to collect, collate, visualize and share data. The paper reports on the platform and the worldwide activities as well as experiences in two case studies, Colouring London (UK) and Colouring Dresden (Germany). It highlights the platform’s potential for knowledge production and transfer in urban and architectural history research, as well as digital humanities. While there is a need for further technical development and research on the impact of citizen science, the platform demonstrates great potential in these fields.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/nolli.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/microsoft/GlobalMLBuildingFootprints.

  3. 3.

    The Virtual Map Forum (https://kartenforum.slub-dresden.de) contains numerous geo-referenced sources on Dresden, such as the Damage Map of 1946, which shows the different degrees of destruction of Dresden buildings after the end of the Second World War (https://slubdd.de/schadensplan).

  4. 4.

    https://www.deutschefotothek.de.

  5. 5.

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/category:dresden.

  6. 6.

    To get an automated count for four subcategories, please refer to https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=24776495.

  7. 7.

    The first address book for Dresden was published in 1702, from 1800 to 1944 they are available digitally almost without gaps (https://digital.slub-dresden.de/kollektionen/72).

  8. 8.

    https://colouringlondon.org.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/colouring-cities.

  10. 10.

    https://colouring.dresden.ioer.info.

  11. 11.

    https://github.com/colouring-cities/colouring-core.

  12. 12.

    https://scholia.toolforge.org/

  13. 13.

    https://zenodo.org/search?page=1&size=20&q=keywords:%22Colouring%20Dresden%22.

  14. 14.

    https://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Projekt:Colouring_Dresden.

  15. 15.

    https://www.nfdi4earth.de/.

  16. 16.

    https://4memory.de/.

  17. 17.

    https://wiki.genealogy.net/.

  18. 18.

    https://database.factgrid.de/wiki/Main_Page.

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Acknowledgments

The project Colouring Dresden is financially supported by prize money from the Citizen Science Competition ‘Auf die Plätze! Citizen Science in deiner Stadt’, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and jointly coordinated by Wissenschaft im Dialog gGmbH and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. We would like to thank all our partners of Colouring London and Colouring Dresden. Special thanks go to the Colouring Cities Research Programme and the people of this international network. Mateusz Konieczny in particular is to be thanked for his valuable feedback related to OpenStreetMap.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Dresden, Germany

    Robert Hecht, Tabea Danke, Hendrik Herold & Theodor Rieche

  2. The Alan Turing Institute, London, UK

    Polly Hudson

  3. Saxon State and University Library, Dresden, Germany

    Martin Munke

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  1. Robert Hecht
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Correspondence to Robert Hecht .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    Sander Münster

  2. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Aaron Pattee

  3. Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    Cindy Kröber

  4. Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany

    Florian Niebling

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Hecht, R., Danke, T., Herold, H., Hudson, P., Munke, M., Rieche, T. (2023). Colouring Cities: A Citizen Science Platform for Knowledge Production on the Building Stock - Potentials for Urban and Architectural History. In: Münster, S., Pattee, A., Kröber, C., Niebling, F. (eds) Research and Education in Urban History in the Age of Digital Libraries. UHDL 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1853. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38871-2_9

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