Methods in Spatial Research Spring 2021
Dare Brawley, Assistant Director, Center for Spatial Research
dare.brawley (at) columbia.edu
office hours; M,T, 2-3; Th 1-2 (sign up here)
TA: Nadine Fattaleh
nf2337 (at) columbia.edu
office hours: Monday 9-11 (email for an appointment)
This course provides an introduction to the critical use of geographic information systems (GIS) and the use of spatial methods for urban humanities research.
Maps and geographic analysis are key tools for interpreting the built environment and the social conditions it contains. GIS methods allow for the analysis of geographic features together with attributes (environmental, social, demographic, political) of those places. The thoughtful use of spatial data can reveal previously unseen patterns, changing the way we see and engage with our world. However, maps are never just representations, they are nearly always active agents in shaping the worlds they describe. With this in mind, students will be introduced to a range of approaches for creating and manipulating spatial data with a focus on the forms of authorship, design, subjectivity embedded in spatial data and its uses.
This is a “making & doing” workshop course that is open to students from within GSAPP, GSAS and the Columbia and Barnard Colleges and is designed to expand the disciplinary locations in which spatial data analysis takes place. Through hands-on exercises and weekly assignments participants will develop basic fluency with open-source mapping software, QGIS, methods of data collection and creation, and approaches and concepts in critical spatial analysis and map design.
After completing the course participants will:
| Week | Date | Topic | Tutorial due | Assignment due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1/15 | Introduction to Critical GIS + Spatial Data Types | ||
| 2 | 1/22 | Cartographic Projections + Mapping Existing Datasets | Tutorial 1 | |
| 3 | 1/29 | Making Data From Observation & Sensing | Tutorial 2 | Assignment 1 |
| 4 | 2/5 | Making Data from Archives | Tutorial 3 | Assignment 2 |
| 5 | 2/12 | Making Data from Satellites | Tutorial 4 | Assignment 3 |
| 6 | 2/19 | Maps & Narrative / Portfolio Presentations | Tutorial 5a or Tutorial 5b | Assignment 4 |
| no class | 3/10 | Portfolio Due |
All course tutorials and assignments will be posted here on the course website. All readings will be posted on the course Google Drive folder or made available via hyperlink below.
Group map critiques. Examples to be distributed during class
Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping.” 2014.
Couclelis, Helen. “People Manipulate Objects (but Cultivate Fields): Beyond the Raster-Vector Debate in GIS.” 1992.
Review projects/precedent examples page. Pick out two-three examples each week to review thoroughly on your own.
Optional: Rankin, William. “Introduction Territory and the Mapping Sciences” in After The Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2016. [available online via CLIO here]
House, Brian. “Stalking the Smart City.” 2019
Ferrari, Marco, Elisa Pasqual, Alessandro Busi, Aaron Gillett. A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change [Selections]. 2019
Williams, Sarah, Jacqueline Klopp, Daniel Orwa, Peter Waiganjo, and Adam White. “Digital Matatus: Using Mobile Technology to Visualize Informality.” 2015.
Baics, Gergely, and Leah Meisterlin. “Zoning Before Zoning: Land Use and Density in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York City.” 2016. Available here on google drive.
Majd Al-shihabi, Ahmad Barclay, et al. Palestine Open Maps. 2018-ongoing
Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond. Mapping Inequality 2015-ongoing
Kurgan, Laura. “Mapping Considered as a Problem of Theory and Practice.” 2013.
Please also review from week 2: Couclelis, Helen. “People Manipulate Objects (but Cultivate Fields): Beyond the Raster-Vector Debate in GIS.” 1992
Please read 2-3 map-based articles from the New York Times. A list is included at the end of the precedents page here (if you choose one that is not already on the list, please include a link in your discussion question post on Canvas).
Attendance at all six class sessions is required. You are expected to give engaged and generous participation in class discussions and in critique workshops with your peers. To help prepare reading conversations, each week you will post/pose one discussion question to the class via Canvas by 8am each Friday.
Skills-focused weekly tutorials are required and will expose you to multiple methods for engaging with spatial data. Tutorials include step by step instructions and are graded on completion (not accuracy).
Weekly map assignments will allow you to apply the skills acquired via tutorials and begin to experiment with creative applications of spatial methods. Five map assignments will be completed over the course of the six week course and as such are intended to be limited in scope; experimental; and geared towards learning and creative engagement rather than demonstrating advanced skills. Assignment descriptions and associated assessment rubrics will be distributed each week.
For the final course session you will assemble your map assignments into a single document/portfolio/atlas.
Final assessment will be based on:
Attendance, engaged participation & discussion questions 20%
Weekly tutorial completion 30%
Weekly map assignments & compiled/revised map portfolio 50% (10% each)
Geographic Information Systems is not a software. As such this course will not seek to provide students with proficiency in a particular software platform.
Tutorial resources will be primarily provided for QGIS 3.10. This is an open source software program for geographic analysis that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. All students will be expected to download and install QGIS 3.10. Documentation for QGIS is available here, and a training manual with good basic tutorials is available here.
Information regarding other GIS softwares will be provided in course resources.
Knowledge of design and layout programs (Adobe Illustrator, and InDesign) may be useful to you but is not required.
All readings and course data will be available via Google Drive here.
The intellectual venture in which we are all engaged requires of faculty and students alike the highest level of personal and academic integrity. As members of an academic community, each one of us bears the responsibility to participate in scholarly discourse and research in a manner characterized by intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity.
Scholarship, by its very nature, is an iterative process, with ideas and insights building one upon the other. Collaborative scholarship requires the study of other scholars’ work, the free discussion of such work, and the explicit acknowledgement of those ideas in any work that inform our own. This exchange of ideas relies upon a mutual trust that sources, opinions, facts, and insights will be properly noted and carefully credited.
In practical terms, this means that, as students, you must be responsible for the full citations of others’ ideas in all of your research papers and projects; you must be scrupulously honest when taking your examinations; you must always submit your own work and not that of another student, scholar, or internet agent.
Any breach of this intellectual responsibility is a breach of faith with the rest of our academic community. It undermines our shared intellectual culture, and it cannot be tolerated. Students failing to meet these responsibilities should anticipate being asked to leave Columbia.
For more information on academic integrity at Columbia, students may refer to the Columbia University Undergraduate Guide to Academic Integrity as well as the GSAPP Honor System and Plagiarism Policy.
This is a discussion and collaborative-critique based course. All students and the instructor must be respectful of others in the classroom. If you ever feel that the classroom environment is discouraging your participation or is problematic in anyway please contact me.
GSAPP is committed to full inclusion of all students. Especially in online formats. Students needing any form of accommodation due to a disability should check in with Disability Services (DS) and speak with me at the beginning of the semester to provide the accommodations letter from DS. Alternatively you may ask your advisor to consult with me regarding your accommodations.
To help further class discussion and collaboration in the online format of this course you are: expected to arrive to the scheduled zoom meeting on time; encouraged to participate with your video camera (if technical or other issues prevent this please speak with me); and keep your audio muted when you are not actively speaking.
Current online formats have meant that the burden to provide comfortable spaces of learning previously shouldered by the University are now felt by each of us – this is a real challenge! If you are experiencing any difficulties here which may impact your participation in class (internet connectivity issues, interferences etc) please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
During scheduled class time you will be expected to use your computer exclusively to access course-related materials (zoom meeting, tutorial resources, class syllabus, readings, QGIS).
The online format of this course means that minimizing/resisting external distractions from non-class related computing (social media usage, email, other course work, online shopping etc) is challenging – but a shared responsibility of all members of the class. For more on computation and attention please see Tim Wu’s Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to get Inside our Heads
Students should not rely on or expect an immediate response to questions sent via email to the instructor. Please begin assignments with enough time to attend office hours or ask a question several days before the assignment is due.
Learning how to troubleshoot technical issues and locate relevant resources is crucial in your long-term success with GIS methods. With this in mind emails with technical questions must at a minimum contain the following:
Baics, Gergely, and Leah Meisterlin. “Zoning Before Zoning: Land Use and Density in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York City.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106, no. 5 (September 2, 2016): 1152–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2016.1177442.
Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping.” In Landscape Imagination: Collected Essays of James Corner 1990-2010. New York, UNITED STATES: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/columbia/detail.action?docID=3387582.
Couclelis, Helen. “People Manipulate Objects (but Cultivate Fields): Beyond the Raster-Vector Debate in GIS.” In Theories and Methods of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Space, edited by A. U. Frank, I. Campari, and U. Formentini, 639:65–77. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 1992. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55966-3_3.
Ferrari, Marco, Elisa Pasqual, and Andrea Bagnato. A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change. New York, NY: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2019.
Kurgan, Laura. “Mapping Considered as a Problem of Theory and Practice.” In Close up at a Distance : Mapping, Technology, and Politics, 9–18. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2013.
Williams, Sarah, Jacqueline Klopp, Daniel Orwa, Peter Waiganjo, and Adam White. “Digital Matatus: Using Mobile Technology to Visualize Informality.” ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center, 2015, 9.