Visualising the Spatial History of Melbourne

This visualisation has been developed to be able to make full use of the complex data associated with historical cinema venues; data which is temporally, spatially, and tematically rich. The graphic approach enables multiple variables about a cinema venue, such as seating capacity, to be viewed in the one image along with spatial and temporal components which show changes to variables over time. This figure shows the visualisation approach applied to Melbourne's cinema venue data, depicting the spatial distribution and change over time for large cinema chains operating in the period between 1946 and 1986. The variables that are investigated are the name of the cinema chain, the number of changes that occurred to a venue during the period, and whether the venue was owned, managed, or leased by the cinema chain. Each cinema venue is now a line, one that has length/duration, and therefore history.