This website is no longer updated and has been replaced with a static copy. The Spatial History Project was active at Stanford University from 2007-2022, engaging in dozens of collaborative projects led by faculty, staff, graduate students, post-docs, visiting scholars and others at Stanford and beyond. More than 150 undergraduate students from more than a dozen disciplines contributed to these projects. In addition to a robust intellectual exchange built through these partnerships, research outputs included major monographs, edited volumes, journal articles, museum exhibitions, digital articles, robust websites, and dozens of lightweight interactive visualizations, mostly developed with Adobe Flash (now defunct). While most of those publications live on in other forms, the content exclusive to this website is preserved in good faith through this static version of the site. Flash-based content is partially available in emulated form using the Ruffle emulator.
Landscape Change in Southern Brazil, from 1953 to the Present Day
Authors
Fred Freitas
Peter Salazar
Celena Allen
The Iguaçu National Park was created between 1939 and 1944 by the Brazilian national government at the border with Argentina. The creation of the park was disputed by the local state government, which, in the late 1950s, started to settle hundreds of families of Brazilians farmers inside park area. This later resulted in a conflicted process of removal and resettlement promoted by the Brazilian national government in the 1970s. The confluence of settlers and different levels of government has left marks on the landscape of the park. This is a story that can be better understood through the conjunction of text and image. Here, we present an online interactive visualization that tells this story. Based on two sets of historical aerial photographs of the region produced by the state of Parana, the visualization offers a diachronic spatial narrative of the role of environmental policy in the creation and preservation of nature.
(Portuguese translation)
Mudança de Paisagem no Sul do Brasil, de 1953 aos Dias Atuais
O Parque Nacional do Iguaçu foi criado pelo governo brasileiro entre 1939 e 1944 na fronteira com a Argentina. A criação do parque foi contestada pelo governo do Paraná, que, a partir do final da década de 50, começou a incentivar a colonização da região. Isto resultou em um conflituoso processo de remoção e reassentamento promovido pela ditadura militar nos anos 70. A confluência de colonos e diferentes níveis governamentais deixou marcas na paisagem do parque. Esta é uma história que demanda a conjunção de texto e imagem para uma melhor compreensão. Apresentamos uma visualização interativa que conta esta história. Esta visualização baseia-se em dois conjuntos de fotografias aéreas históricas da região produzidas pelo governo do Paraná. Ela oferece uma narrativa espacial diacrônica do papel da política ambiental na criação e preservação da natureza.
