Digital Recreations: Reviving Lost Communities Through Elders’ Stories

Some of the 3D digital models created by researchers to depict lost neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio, tell a clear story by placing the “ghosts” of houses that were demolished for freeway construction atop the roadways now occupying that land. But by talking to the people who lived in these communities, scientists are filling in historic gaps that technology can’t fill, adding trees, cars, people, photographs and life stories to the digitized infrastructure that was an initial focus of the work.