For my digital methodology project, I decided to research whether or not Fredericksburg was undergoing gentrification by using online mapping tools. For the project we had to pick a research question to investigate with the help of digital tools. I explored the methodology module in the UMW digital studies website to learn about different tools I could use for this project and decided mapping tools would be the best way to document the gentrification taking place in Fredericksburg. Gentrification is defined as “the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, raising property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses,” by Dictionary.com. It’s important to discover whether or not gentrification is happening because it actively harms those who are generally of the lower class and black. People who lived in the city their whole lives are being priced out by wealthier families and businesses. I tried to use Google Earth to view how areas of Fredericksburg have changed over the past couple of decades. I thought you could use Google Earth to view images from earlier dates, but I was not able to. I ended up using Google maps instead because it did have that function. I surveyed how streets changed over the past two decades and took screenshots with my computer so I could compile them into storymap. Storymap is the digital mapping tool that I ended up using to showcase how Fredericksburg has been gentrified over the past 20 years. I also tried to look up stories about how local people viewed the gentrification of Fredericksburg, but they were behind paywalls, so I wasn’t able to access them. Storymap ended up being the most important tool for my project because it allowed me to create a timeline of the gentrification of certain areas around Fredericksburg. From my project I can conclude that Fredericksburg has indeed been undergoing gentrification for the past 2 decades.
