ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a new approach to the comparative history of urban social life. Following the recent turn by many historians to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which facilitate the systematic integration of spatial analysis into the telling of the past, it argues that comparative urban social history stands especially to benefit from, and to contribute to, digital historical mapping. The ability of GIS to answer this kind of question in a systematic fashion to offer quantitative evidence in support of qualitative analysis of city life gives it particular promise in the field of urban social history. Social historical accounts of the 'choreographies' of urban life can make distinctive contributions to this new history of cities. Comparative histories of everyday experiences, of the practices and paths of everyday urban life, illuminate the similarities and differences among cities in as yet unanticipated ways. In using digital mapping to tell new histories of cities, urbanists push GIS history in new and important directions.
