Projet
Project history
This project started with the documents collected for the writing of my Ph.D. dissertation “The French Concession of Hankou: From Condemnation to the Appropriation of Heritage” (Univ. of Paris VII-2007). Although this study made an extensive use of photographs and cartographic sources, the methodology was not based on the systematic use of visual documents, which I aim to do now.
Objective :To propose an online documentation to the academic community
Hankou is a very much understudied city. Available sources are not so numerous and publications are scarce. The establishment of the Virtual Hankou platform will enable us to explore the potentialities of various materials: Chinese and foreign cartographic representations of the city as well as historical photographs.
The main challenge for this project was the nature and the quality of the data. Sources are not systematic. Speaking of inconsistency or incompleteness of the sources is a euphemism. Each administration produced different kinds of data, using different methods, and did not necessarily produce them in the same time period. Photographs, especially those derived from a private collection, have been immensely useful, helping to compensate for the numerical paucity of numeric data.
The long-term objective is to be useful for research, teaching, as well as urban renovation
Funding
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation: "Cities in turmoil" (2010-2012)
Last update on Saturday 5 January 2013 (12:40) by C. Henriot
