ABSTRACT
The digital turn is changing our access to knowledge and our understanding of cultural heritage. This process raises questions: How do we deal with issues concerning complex urban histories in the light of citizen science and the Semantic Web (Web 3.0)? What kinds of access, interaction, and participation are required in relation to open science strategies? What kinds of impacts will diverse forms of three-dimensional (3D) visualization and representations of urban heritage have on the process of citizen identification in cities such as Kaliningrad (Russia)? For decades, the city suffered from neglect of its multicultural (perceived as ‘alien’) history and from the destruction of its tangible heritage. Kaliningrad is currently confronted with the challenge of reinventing its identity in a Russian enclave encircled by European Union member states.
This chapter reveals new strategies for securing urban heritage through digitization and visualization as part of current project ideas on the urban histories of Kaliningrad, by: reactivating social awareness of ‘alien’ legacies; broadening identities via 3D digital reconstruction of their vanished urban heritage; and by influencing the political decisions and economic development of urban space. In addition, it asks how authenticity is shaped by such processes of securitization.
The author presents the impacts of information and communications technologies on current urban research and dissemination projects, in particular those represented by three-dimensional (3D) digital reconstructions of (physically erased) historical sites based on historical source material. This chapter addresses, on the one hand, the need for documentation standards allowing the interoperability and sustainability of digital research data, thereby ensuring the structured human- and machine-readable data that are required to generate meaningful access. On the other hand, it describes the rich array of new technologies and the role of social media, in particular crowdsourcing, in the process of creating semantically enriched 3D models and an identification with urban heritage.
