Sources
The sources used in this project were mainly local. This gives perspective to what those who lived in this community went through and gives a more inside effect to what happened to Victory Acres. The local newspapers and the local church were excellent sources to find out how the people of the neighborhood actually reacted to the decline of their community. Scholarly sources of journals were also used to show other areas that a similar community decline that occurred in Arlington, Virginia, and to discuss the natural progression of decline in neighborhoods. The combination of these sources led to the conclusion that old neighborhoods fade away as the population ages, homes become in disrepair, and become low rent housing. The younger generation generally wants new and better opportunities and this causes them to move out of the neighborhood.
The aerial maps of the area, from the neighborhood’s inception in 1945 to the present, are also a great source. They how the neighborhood progressed over time. The maps showed this neighborhood go from mainly farmland to a community to the decline. The maps over time have given rise to the conclusion that the neighborhood has been through much hardship involved with eminent domain and property decline.
Methods
GIS is powerful tool that allows historians to organize and visualize spatial data. Information from a variety of source types can be standardized, given real-world coordinates for comparison, and shared easily between researchers. GIS also allows for generation and digitizing of historical information from sources allowing for comparisons and analysis between datasets. This organization and analysis provides historians with the ability to better visualize data, make observations, and answer questions about the past.
During this study many sources were consulted in order to provide both data and context for the Victory Acres Neighborhood. GIS data for this project were organized and analyzed using QGIS version 2.14.4 and Google Earth. Historic aerial photography for the study area was georeferenced by identifying common features as points of reference on both the historic aerial and other georeferenced layers such as a modern satellite base map, roadways, houses, waterways and bridges. Features represented on the historic aerials were then digitized to provide points of reference from various years for comparison of changes over time. In order to test the accuracy and validity of the data, a site visit was conducted and members of the community were interviewed. GIS data were generated and are presented in a series of maps describing the project area or showing the changes in Victory Acres over time.