Fieldwork enables us to gain a greater understanding of the people and places that we encounter. Urban areas are popular places for fieldwork because they present a backdrop that is in a continual state of change. Yet the past is ever present in the urban landscape as each place can be regarded as a ‘palimpsest’, where layers of history, geography, culture and politics co-exist (Marvell and Simm 2016).
Landscape change is discoverable through a range of sources, including historic maps and images. These allow us to unravel the story of a landscape in terms of its people, geography, history, culture and architecture. At the heart of this methodology is an approach which attempts to decipher and unravel a geographical narrative through understanding a range of processes, flows and meanings.
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