As has already been stated, a large part of my analysis of the site has been focused around the history of the site and how it has changed and evolved over time, in terms of its form, programme, and the relative presence of nature and humanity on it. Some of the ways that I have found out more about the site include looking into archives to find historical photographs and reading online articles from sites such as theskyliner.org. But before using either of these methods, the first thing that I did was to find and collate all of the historical maps that I could.
My first port of call for historical maps was Digimap, a service available to higher education establishments. Once I had downloaded all of the ones available on Digimap, I found a few additional maps on online Manchester archives.
Once I had collected the maps, I compiled them as layers, along with the latest Ordnance Survey mapping and aerial photograph surveying data, so that they were all correctly scaled and aligned with each other. This allowed me to then be able to toggle between different layers and see the changes that were occurring on the site at different periods of time.
Whilst this was useful, when compiled and switched between in this way, it immediately becomes apparent that the graphical styles change quite a lot, in a way which can distract from the actual changes of the site. When we look at a map, we are seeing a representation of a site which has pulled out certain elements for us; we could consider it as us looking at the site through a particular filter. In the case of these maps, the issue is that this filter keeps changing, meaning that the same elements can be represented in different way.
Progression of time shown through original historical maps in varying styles
To counter this, to convey the changes of the site over its history, and moving forward into its future with my proposal, I think that it is going to be important redraw these different time layers in one consistent and simple style. Once these layers are drawn, I can explore further how best to use them to present time-based changes to a viewer.
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