ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the use of historical geographic information systems in the service of a spatial history of property in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The basic constituents of the urban property scene in Rio de Janeiro during the 1800s were rentiers and renters. Renters and rentiers alike faced a changing urban world during the second half of the nineteenth century. At the most general level, inequality among owners of urban property changed very little over the period 1849 to 1888. Renters and rentiers alike faced a changing urban world during the second half of the nineteenth century. Stories about individual people can be sketched out, placed in a spatial context, and leveraged to imagine the challenges and opportunities associated with urban property in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. This approach suggests that the range of methods in historical geographic information systems can be expanded in fruitful ways to include dimensions of human experience within and beyond the map.