2. Spatial Humanities GIS: The City As a Literary, Historical, and Cultural STEAM Lifeworld Laboratory

Cities envisioned through the phenomenological lenses of literature and history cannot necessarily be parsed by algorithms, sensors and Smart City techno-rhetoric, but may suggest STEAM framed avenues of engagement between literary, historical and cultural scholars and computer scientists and urban engineers. As a STEAM cognate discipline, the Spatial Humanities is a new interdisciplinary field which finds scholars in literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, film, culture and media studies engaged with colleagues from scientific and quantitatively-oriented disciplines to explore questions on geographical and conceptual space. The field exploits various geospatial and digital data technologies, guided in their use by the history and philosophy of spatial thought, literary criticism, linguistics, digital media and geographic information science (GIS). By focusing questions concerning place and space through the lens of the humanities, the field has been exploring methodologies in geo-data mining, the geo-semantic Web, and the visualization, analysis and spatial applications of cultural and historical data, among other topics. The agenda of the Spatial Humanities includes the pursuit of theory, methods, case studies, experiments, applied technology, broad narratives, and more persuasive strategies. Its aims are commensurate with STEAM initiatives in its goal to bridge research fields in arts, humanities and (natural, life and social) sciences.